ALL MONSTERS MUST DIE: AN EXCURSION TO NORTH KOREA
By Magnus Bärtås and Fredrik Ekman, translated from the Swedish by Saskia Vogel. (Anansi, 288 pages, $16.95.)
Swedish writers Magnus Bärtås and Fredrik Ekman took a guided tour of North Korea in 2008, the year that isolated and weird country celebrated its 60th anniversary. The men and their tour group traveled beyond the capital of Pyongyang (where tourists are usually restricted to) into the mountains of the north.
Their account of this trip, "All Monsters Must Die," starts out telling us stuff we mostly know — how repressive the regime is, how strict the supervision of visitors, how beaten-down the citizens, how nasty the gulags.
But as the visitors venture farther and farther north, the book grows more fascinating, the trip more bizarre, the other members of the tour group odder and odder, the tour guides more beleaguered.
The book weaves the tale of this strange journey with the true story of the 1978 kidnapping of a South Korean film star and her film director ex-husband — a story also recounted in Paul Fischer's 2015 book "A Kim Jong-Il Production." The actress and the director were held in North Korea for years, where they were given everything they needed for moviemaking — everything, that is, except their freedom.
The two narratives fit together nicely as the Swedish writers mesh the Korean leaders' odd passion for movies with the heavily scripted world their visitors are allowed to see.
LAURIE HERTZEL,
Senior editor/books
Napoleon: Soldier of Destiny
By Michael Broers. (Pegasus, 585 pages, $35.)
The improbable rise of Napoleon Bonaparte to rule the Western world continues to inspire biographers, and Michael Broers has written a half-dozen. But he has found something new to say, thanks to the Napoléon Foundation's recent release of personal correspondence. Broers uses Napoleon's voice to help connect the dots from his birth in obscurity on the tiny Mediterranean island of Corsica to his spectacular rise and fall.
