A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

I'm going to need a few days to process what I've just read.

We're often prone to looking upon North Korea through the lens of our perspective of Kim-Jong Un (i.e. a brat - albeit a dangerous one - with small man syndrome).

Not after this.

I knew that North Korea's citizens lived in poverty, but not like this.

Masaji Ishikawa's recounting of his daily toil is mentally exhausting. His bleak non-existence genuinely hurts to read. Death, starvation, brainwashing - it's desperately oppressive.

I hope, sincerely, that since writing this, he has been able to find some sort of peace.

I haven't felt this unsettled reading a book since Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure.

Here's the thing though. This isn't fiction.

I'm not sure I'll be able to bring myself to pick this one up again for a long time, but I'm tremendously glad that I did read it.

I can't give this less than 5 stars. It's an eye-opening account I'll never forget. Not necessarily for the right reasons, but I don't think Ishikawa would have it any other way.

As Chapter One closes, thirteen-year-old Ishikawa is boarding a train with his family; it is impossible not to be reminded of other mid-twentieth-century trains, European ones, the difference being that everyone in the latter cases had a fair idea of what lay ahead.

This book is tragedy beyond anything you or I have ever experienced or can imagine, compounded by the knowledge that it is happening in the present day. Ishikawa's narrow personal focus gives the reader perspective that no amount of newspaper coverage could; we are slammed on every page with nonstop daily suffering. And even though there's nothing we can do to help - not the author, not his family, not North Koreans - we can learn much from this book: about compassion, gratitude, and perhaps even about how to be skeptical of empty promises by narcissistic tyrants; how to avoid taking our own children onto those trains.