More relevant than ever, Pyongyang has been freshly reissued with a new cover and an introduction by film director Gore Verbinski, who had hoped to adapt the book for the screen before the project was deemed too geopolitically volatile.
While living in the nation's capital for two months on a work visa, Delisle observed everything he was allowed to see of the culture and lives of the few North Koreans he encountered, bringing a sardonic and skeptical perspective on a place rife with propaganda. Delisle himself is the ideal foil for North Korean spin, the grumpy outsider who brought a copy of George Orwell’s 1984 with him into the totalitarian nation.
As a guide to the country, Delisle is a non-believer with a keen eye for the humor and tragedy of dictatorial whims, expressed in looming architecture and tiny, omnipresent photos of the President. The absurd vagaries of everyday life become fodder for a frustrated animator’s musings as boredom and censorship sink in.
Pyongyang is an informative, personal, and accessible look at a dangerous and enigmatic country which has recently been the target of the American presidency's unpredictable whims and inflammatory rhetoric. Read it today!
