Every Falling Star

The True Story of How I Survived and Escaped North Korea

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Every Falling Star

By: Sungju Lee, Susan McClelland

Narrated by: David Shih

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About this listen

Every Falling Star, the first book to portray contemporary North Korea to a young audience, is the intense memoir of a North Korean boy named Sungju, who is forced at age 12 to live on the streets and fend for himself. To survive, Sungju creates a gang and lives by thieving, fighting, begging, and stealing rides on cargo trains. Sungju richly recreates his scabrous story, depicting what it was like for a boy alone to create a new family with his gang, his "brothers"; to be hungry and to fear arrest, imprisonment, and even execution. This riveting memoir allows young listeners to learn about other cultures where freedoms they take for granted do not exist.

Biographies

History & Culture

Politics, Society & Current Events

Heartfelt

Inspiring

China

Memoir

Imperial Japan

North Korea

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Critic reviews

"A pampered son of the elite survives a nightmarish ordeal in this page-turner of a memoir." ( Kirkus)

Most relevant

This book is so so powerful. People should know those stories and I think we have to otherwise all those people who are still there, people who survived it are just lost. As we remember lots and lots of horrible things that people have done to each other, we have to remember that. It is very sad, and amazing at the same time how it’s real. It’s absolutely stunning to imagine that that is actually true, but even more sad to understand, to realise that for those people who are still in North Korea nothing has changed. They still die and suffer so so so much from the government, but as well as that, they are being fooled so much, and they have none idea about what is happening. Thank you for this book. It changed my way of thinking completely.