Barbara Demick

In 2000, a Chinese woman gave birth to twins in a bamboo grove, trying to avoid detection by the government because she already had two daughters. Two years later, an American couple travelled to Shaoyang to adopt a Chinese toddler they thought had been abandoned. Their understanding had been that China's brutal one-child policy was leading to hundreds of abandoned girls, desperate for the care of adopted parents. What they didn't know - and what award-winning journalist Barbara Demick uncovered in 2007, while working as a correspondent in Beijing - was that their daughter had been snatched from her beloved family and her identical twin. Under China's one-child policy hundreds of poor Chinese were giving up their children due to soaring fines and threats of violence. More sinister still, international demand for adoptees was sky-rocketing, and local officials were forcibly seizing children and trafficking them to orphanages, who were selling them abroad. Daughters of the Bamboo Grove tells the gripping story of separated twins, their respective fates in China and the USA, and Barbara Demick's role in reuniting them against huge odds. Painting a rich portrait of China's history and culture, it asks questions about the roots, impact and consequences of China's one-child policy, the ethics of international adoption, and, ultimately, the assumptions and narratives we hold about the quality of lives lived in the East and the West.

In 2000, a Chinese woman gave birth to twins in a bamboo grove, trying to avoid detection by the government because she already had two daughters. Two years later, an American couple travelled to Shaoyang to adopt a Chinese toddler they thought had been abandoned. Their understanding had been that China's brutal one-child policy was leading to hundreds of abandoned girls, desperate for the care of adopted parents. What they didn't know - and what award-winning journalist Barbara Demick uncovered in 2007, while working as a correspondent in Beijing - was that their daughter had been snatched from her beloved family and her identical twin. Under China's one-child policy hundreds of poor Chinese were giving up their children due to soaring fines and threats of violence. More sinister still, international demand for adoptees was sky-rocketing, and local officials were forcibly seizing children and trafficking them to orphanages, who were selling them abroad. Daughters of the Bamboo Grove tells the gripping story of separated twins, their respective fates in China and the USA, and Barbara Demick's role in reuniting them against huge odds. Painting a rich portrait of China's history and culture, it asks questions about the roots, impact and consequences of China's one-child policy, the ethics of international adoption, and, ultimately, the assumptions and narratives we hold about the quality of lives lived in the East and the West.

The extraordinary and riveting story of separated Chinese twins, with one twin seized by the authorities and adopted into America, by the Samuel Johnson-winning author of Nothing to Envy. In 2000, a Chinese woman gave birth to twins in a bamboo grove, trying to avoid detection by the government because she already had two daughters. Two years later, an American couple travelled to Shaoyang to adopt a Chinese toddler they thought had been abandoned. Their understanding had been that China's brutal one-child policy was leading to hundreds of abandoned girls, desperate for the care of adopted parents. What they didn't know - and what award-winning journalist Barbara Demick uncovered in 2007, while working as a correspondent in Beijing - was that their daughter had been snatched from her beloved family and her identical twin. Under China's one-child policy hundreds of poor Chinese were giving up their children due to soaring fines and threats of violence. More sinister still, international demand for adoptees was sky-rocketing, and local officials were forcibly seizing children and trafficking them to orphanages, who were selling them abroad. Daughters of the Bamboo Grove tells the gripping story of separated twins, their respective fates in China and the USA, and Barbara Demick's role in reuniting them against huge odds. Painting a rich portrait of China's history and culture, it asks questions about the roots, impact and consequences of China's one-child policy, the ethics of international adoption, and, ultimately, the assumptions and narratives we hold about the quality of lives lived in the East and the West.

The heartrending story of twin sisters torn apart by China's one-child policy and the rise of international adoption--from the author of the National Book Award finalist Nothing to Envy "Excellent . . . entrancing and disturbing . . . Demick] is one of our finest chroniclers of East Asia. . . . Her] characters are richly drawn, and her stories, often reported over a span of years, deliver a rare emotional wallop."--The New York Times (Editors' Choice) On a warm day in September 2000, a woman named Zanhua gave birth to twin girls in a small hut behind her brother's home in China's Hunan province. The twins, Fangfang and Shuangjie, were welcome additions to her family but also not her first children. Living under the shadow of China's notorious one-child policy, Zanhua and her husband decided to leave one twin in the care of relatives, hoping each toddler on their own might stay under the radar. But, in 2002, Fangfang was violently snatched away. The family worried they would never see her again, but they didn't imagine she could be sent as far as the United States. She might as well have been sent to another world. Following stories she wrote as the Beijing bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, Barbara Demick embarks on a journey that encompasses the origins, shocking cruelty, and long-term impact of China's one-child rule; the rise of international adoption and the religious currents that buoyed it; and the exceedingly rare phenomenon of twin separation. Today, Esther--formerly Fangfang--lives in Texas, and Demick brings to vivid life the Christian family that felt called to adopt her, unaware that she had been kidnapped. Through Demick's indefatigable reporting, will the long-lost sisters finally reunite--and will they feel whole again? A remarkable window into the volatile, constantly changing China of the last half century and the long-reaching legacy of the country's most infamous law, Daughters of the Bamboo Grove is also the moving story of two sisters torn apart by the forces of history and brought together again by their families' determination and one reporter's dogged work.

Raastava kuvaus Tiibetin epätoivosta ja kaupungista, josta tuli polttoitsemurhaprotestien keskus. Ngaban kaduilla näkyvät buddhalainen perinne, Kiinan miehitys ja moderni 2000-luku. Joukko kaupunkilaisia kertoo valloituksen jäljistä: prinsessa, jonka perhe tuhottiin, munkki, jonka veli on tehnyt polttoitsemurhan, paimen josta tuli yhteisönsä historioitsija. Nuoret etsivät tulevaisuutta luostareista tai kiinalaisista kouluista. He kaikki joutuvat valitsemaan vastarinnan ja myöntymisen välillä. Epätoivoinen vastarinta on johtanut 150 polttoitsemurhaan, vaikka Tiibetissä sekä toisen että oman hengen riistäminen on tabu. Palkittu tekijä on aiemmin julkaissut myyntimenestyksen Suljettu maa.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR IN FINANCIAL TIMES, ECONOMIST, NEW YORK TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, SPECTATOR 'You simply cannot understand China without reading Barbara Demick on Tibet' Evan Osnos, author of Age of Ambition In 1950, China claimed sovereignty over Tibet, leading to decades of unrest and resistance. Barbara Demick chronicles the Tibetan tragedy from Ngaba, a defiant town on the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau. From the stories of Ngaba's last princess and those who experienced the struggle sessions of Mao's revolution to the experiences of today's monks and townsfolk suffering repression under China's rule, Demick paints a riveting portrait of Tibet past and present as it fights for its identity against one of the most powerful countries in the world.

A gripping portrait of modern Tibet told through the lives of its people, from the bestselling author of Nothing to Envy "A brilliantly reported and eye-opening work of narrative nonfiction."--The New York Times Book Review NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Parul Sehgal, The New York Times - The New York Times Book Review - The Washington Post - NPR - The Economist - Outside - Foreign Affairs Just as she did with North Korea, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick explores one of the most hidden corners of the world. She tells the story of a Tibetan town perched eleven thousand feet above sea level that is one of the most difficult places in all of China for foreigners to visit. Ngaba was one of the first places where the Tibetans and the Chinese Communists encountered one another. In the 1930s, Mao Zedong's Red Army fled into the Tibetan plateau to escape their adversaries in the Chinese Civil War. By the time the soldiers reached Ngaba, they were so hungry that they looted monasteries and ate religious statues made of flour and butter--to Tibetans, it was as if they were eating the Buddha. Their experiences would make Ngaba one of the engines of Tibetan resistance for decades to come, culminating in shocking acts of self-immolation. Eat the Buddha spans decades of modern Tibetan and Chinese history, as told through the private lives of Demick's subjects, among them a princess whose family is wiped out during the Cultural Revolution, a young Tibetan nomad who becomes radicalized in the storied monastery of Kirti, an upwardly mobile entrepreneur who falls in love with a Chinese woman, a poet and intellectual who risks everything to voice his resistance, and a Tibetan schoolgirl forced to choose at an early age between her family and the elusive lure of Chinese money. All of them face the same dilemma: Do they resist the Chinese, or do they join them? Do they adhere to Buddhist teachings of compassion and nonviolence, or do they fight? Illuminating a culture that has long been romanticized by Westerners as deeply spiritual and peaceful, Demick reveals what it is really like to be a Tibetan in the twenty-first century, trying to preserve one's culture, faith, and language against the depredations of a seemingly unstoppable, technologically all-seeing superpower. Her depiction is nuanced, unvarnished, and at times shocking.

I skydd av nattens mörker inleder ungdomarna Jun San och Mi Ran i hemlighet en relation. Under långa promenader går de hand i hand och pratar om allt utom den regim som tvingar dem att smyga med sin kärlek. I Inget att avundas får vi också möta flera andra vanliga nordkoreaner: en fabriksarbetare som såg sin familj svälta ihjäl innan hon flydde utomlands och en självuppoffrande doktor som tog emot mutor för att köpa mat, och vars far i sorg efter ledaren Kim Il Sungs död begick självmord. Barbara Demick levandegör vardagslivet, kulturen och maktens mekanismer i ett gripande och insiktsfullt reportage från världens mest slutna rike. Inget att avundas tilldelades det mest prestigefulla reportagebokspriset, BBC:s Samuel Johnson-pris 2010, och boken nominerades till National Book Award, den amerikanska motsvarigheten till Augustpriset.

For four centuries, Logavina Street was a quiet residential road in a city known for its ethnic tolerance and cosmopolitan charm. Muslims, Christians, Serbs and Croats lived easily together, sharing an identity as Bosnians. Then the war tore their lives apart. Often without heat, water, food or electricity, they evaded daily sniper fire and witnessed horrific deaths. Neighbours and friends turned into deadly enemies. In this intimate eyewitness account, Barbara Demick weaves together the stories of ten families from Logavina Street, brilliantly illuminating one of the pivotal events of the twentieth century, and describes how, twenty years later, they are coping with the war's consequences. .

Logavina Street was a microcosm of Sarajevo, a six-block-long history lesson. For four centuries, it existed as a quiet residential area in a charming city long known for its ethnic and religious tolerance. On this street of 240 families, Muslims and Christians, Serbs and Croats lived easily together, unified by their common identity as Sarajevans. Then the war tore it all apart. As she did in her groundbreaking work about North Korea, Nothing to Envy, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick tells the story of the Bosnian War and the brutal and devastating three-and-a-half-year siege of Sarajevo through the lives of ordinary citizens, who struggle with hunger, poverty, sniper fire, and shellings. Logavina Street paints this misunderstood war and its effects in vivid strokes--at once epic and intimate--revealing the heroism, sorrow, resilience, and uncommon faith of its people. With a new Introduction, final chapter, and Epilogue by the author

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST - An eye-opening account of life inside North Korea--a closed world of increasing global importance--hailed as a "tour de force of meticulous reporting" (The New York Review of Books) FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD - FINALIST FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD WINNER OF WINNERS AWARD - A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE CENTURY In this landmark addition to the literature of totalitarianism, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick follows the lives of six North Korean citizens over fifteen years--a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung, the rise to power of his son Kim Jong-il (the father of Kim Jong-un), and a devastating famine that killed one-fifth of the population. Demick brings to life what it means to be living under the most repressive regime today--an Orwellian world that is by choice not connected to the Internet, where displays of affection are punished, informants are rewarded, and an offhand remark can send a person to the gulag for life. She takes us deep inside the country, beyond the reach of government censors, and through meticulous and sensitive reporting we see her subjects fall in love, raise families, nurture ambitions, and struggle for survival. One by one, we witness their profound, life-altering disillusionment with the government and their realization that, rather than providing them with lives of abundance, their country has betrayed them.

WINNER OF THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION A spectacular, definitive portrait of ordinary life within one of the world's most repressive states - North Korea. 'A most perceptive and eye-opening account of everyday life in North Korea' Jung Chang North Korea is Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four made reality: it is the only country in the world not connected to the internet; where Gone with the Wind is a dangerous, banned book; and where during political rallies, spies study your expression to check your sincerity. Nothing to Envy weaves together the stories of adversity and resilience of six residents of Chongin, North Korea's third-largest city. From extensive interviews and with tenacious investigative work, Barbara Demick has recreated the concerns, culture and lifestyles of North Korean citizens in a gripping narrative, and vividly reconstructed the inner workings of this extraordinary and secretive country. Includes an updated afterword by the author. 'Impossible to put down... Helps restore humanity to some of the world's most oppressed people' Observer