A Thousand Miles to Freedom: My Escape from North Korea

The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story

Hyeonseo Lee, David John · 320 pages

An extraordinary insight into life under one of the world’s most ruthless and secretive dictatorships – and the story of one woman’s terrifying struggle to avoid capture/repatriation and guide her family to freedom. As a child growing up in North Korea, Hyeonseo Lee was one of millions trapped by a secretive and brutal communist regime. Her home on the border with China gave her some exposure t

Stars Between the Sun and Moon: One Woman's Life in North Korea and Escape to Freedom

Lucia Jang, Susan McClelland · 288 pages

"An incredible memoir of North Korea by a woman who defied the government to keep her family alive. Born in 1970s North Korea, Lucia Jang grew up in a typical household--her parents worked in the factories and the family scraped by on rationed rice and a small garden. Nightly, she bowed to her photo of Kim Il-Sung. But it was the beginning of a chaotic period with a decade-long famine resulting in

So Far from the Bamboo Grove

Yoko Kawashima Watkins · 192 pages

Under the Same Sky: A Memoir of Survival, Hope, and Faith

Joseph Kim, Stephan Talty · 273 pages

"A searing story of starvation and survival in North Korea, followed by a dramatic escape, rescue by activists and Christian missionaries, and success in the United States thanks to newfound faith and courage Inside the hidden and mysterious world of North Korea, Joseph Kim lived a young boy's normal life until he was five. Then disaster struck: the first wave of the Great Famine, a long, terrible

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Ishmael Beah · 234 pages

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (2007) is a memoir written by Ishmael Beah, an author from Sierra Leone. The book is a firsthand account of Beah's time as a child soldier during the civil war in Sierra Leone (1990s). Beah was 12 years old when he fled his village after it was attacked by rebels, and he wandered the war-filled country until brainwashed by an army unit that forced him to u

The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyŏng: The Autobiographical Writings of a Crown Princess of Eighteenth-Century Korea

Lady Hyegyeong · 329 pages

Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

Immaculee Ilibagiza · 215 pages

Immaculee Ilibagiza grew up in a country she loved, surrounded by a family she cherished. But in 1994 her idyllic world was ripped apart as Rwanda descended into a bloody genocide. Immaculee's family was brutally murdered during a killing spree that lasted three months and claimed the lives of nearly a million Rwandans. Incredibly, Immaculee survived the slaughter. For 91 days, she and seven other

In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom

Yeonmi Park, Maryanne Vollers · 288 pages

"'I am most grateful for two things: that I was born in North Korea, and that I escaped from North Korea.' Yeonmi Park was not dreaming of freedom when she escaped from North Korea. She didn't even know what it meant to be free. All she knew was that she was running for her life, that if she and her family stayed behind they would die--from starvation, or disease, or even execution. This book is t

Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West

Blaine Harden · 256 pages

The heartwrenching New York Times bestseller about the only known person born inside a North Korean prison camp to have escaped North Korea’s political prison camps have existed twice as long as Stalin’s Soviet gulags and twelve times as long as the Nazi concentration camps. No one born and raised in these camps is known to have escaped. No one, that is, except Shin Dong-hyuk. In Escape From C

Running for My Life: One Lost Boy's Journey from the Killing Fields of Sudan to the Olympic Games

Lopez Lomong · 240 pages

This is a story about outrunning the devil and achieving the impossible faith, diligence, and the desire to give back. Lomong chronicles his inspiring ascent from a barefoot lost boy of the Sudanese Civil War to a Nike sponsored athlete on the US Olympic Team. He shares his commitment to keep moving forward and find God in each step.

Do They Hear You When You Cry?

Fauziya Kassindja, Layli Miller Bashir, Fauziya Kasinga · 518 pages

Tears of the Desert: A Memoir of Survival in Darfur

Halima Bashir, Damien Lewis · 352 pages

Like the single white eyelash that graces her row of dark lashes--seen by her people as a mark of good fortune--Halima Bashir's story stands out. Tears of the Desert is the first memoir ever written by a woman caught up in the war in Darfur. It is a survivor's tale of a conflicted country, a resilient people, and the uncompromising spirit of a young woman who refused to be silenced.Born into the Z

God Grew Tired of Us: A Memoir

John Bul Dau, Michael S. Sweeney · 295 pages

"Lost Boy" John Bul Dau's harrowing experience surviving the brutal horrors of Sudanese civil war and his adjustment to life in modern America is chronicled in this inspiring memoir and featured in an award-winning documentary film of the same name. Movingly written, the book traces Dau's journey through hunger, exhaustion, terror, and violence as he fled his homeland, dodging ambushes, massacres

Lost Boy, Lost Girl: Escaping Civil War in Sudan

John Bul Dau, Martha Arual Akech · 128 pages

They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky: The True Story of Three Lost Boys from Sudan

Benson Deng, Alephonsion Deng, Benjamin Ajak, Judy A. Bernstein · 311 pages

Our Moon Has Blood Clots: The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits

Rahul Pandita · 272 pages

The Bite of Mango

Mariatu Kamara, Susan McClelland · 216 pages

Ice Bound: One Woman's Incredible Battle for Survival at the South Pole

Jerri Nielsen, Maryanne Vollers · 362 pages

A physician stranded at the South Pole describes how she discovered a lump in her breast, treated herself with a biopsy and chemotherapy, and was rescued by the Air National Guard, and reflects on her experiences and her colleagues. The Antarctic winter, with temperatures 100 below zero, shuts supply lines down completely; conditions are too treacherous for planes or boats and the only connection

In the Presence of My Enemies

Gracia Burnham, Dean Merrill · 320 pages

The Seamstress

Sara Tuvel Bernstein · 353 pages

From its opening pages, in which she recounts her own premature birth, triggered by terrifying rumors of an incipient pogrom, Bernstein's tale is clearly not a typical memoir of the Holocaust. She was born into a large family in rural Romania and grew up feisty and willing to fight back physically against anti-Semitism from other schoolchildren. She defied her father's orders to turn down a schola

Fragments of Isabella: A Memoir of Auschwitz

Isabella Leitner · 112 pages

The true story of a young Hungarian Jew's struggle to survive at Auschwitz and her escape during the death march to Bergen Belsen.

Alicia: My Story

Alicia Appleman, Hurman Alicia Appleman · 433 pages

From Publishers Weekly A young girl's experience of the Nazi pogrom in her Polish hometown is related with an immediacy undimmed by time in her autobiography. In 1942, the author and her family undergo a brutal separation. Thirteen-year-old Alicia escapes her captors, fleeing through fields and woods, encountering fellow refugees and occasionally finding safe harbors. Although she sees her mother

I Have Lived a Thousand Years

Livia E. Bitton-Jackson · 224 pages

So wonders thirteen-year-old Elli Friedmann, just one of the many innocent Holocaust victims, as she fights for her life in a concentration camp. It wasn't long ago that Elli led a normal life; a life rich and full that included family, friends, school, and thoughts about boys. A life in which Elli could lie and daydream for hours that she was a beautiful and elegant celebrated poet. But these ado

The Endless Steppe: Growing Up in Siberia

Esther Hautzig · 243 pages

During World War II, when she was eleven years old, the author and her family were arrested in Poland by the Russians as political enemies and exiled to Siberia. She recounts here the trials of the following five years spent on the harsh Asian steppe.