Suki Kim has 2 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 2 narrators, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 7 ratings. The most-rated is Without You, There Is No Us.
Without You, There Is No Us
Summary
A haunting memoir of teaching English to the sons of North Korea's ruling class during the last six months of Kim Jong-il's reign Every day, three times a day, the students march in two straight lines, singing praises to Kim Jong-il and North Korea: Without you, there is no motherland. Without you, there is no us. It is a chilling scene, but gradually Suki Kim, too, learns the tune and, without noticing, begins to hum it. It is 2011, and all universities in North Korea have been shut down for an entire year, the students sent to construction fields - except for the 270 students at the all-male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), a walled compound where portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il look on impassively from the walls of every room, and where Suki has accepted a job teaching English. Over the next six months, she will eat three meals a day with her young charges and struggle to teach them to write, all under the watchful eye of the regime. Life at PUST is lonely and claustrophobic, especially for Suki, whose letters are read by censors and who must hide her notes and photographs not only from her minders but from her colleagues - evangelical Christian missionaries who don't know or choose to ignore that Suki doesn't share their faith. As the weeks pass, she is mystified by how easily her students lie, unnerved by their obedience to the regime. At the same time, they offer Suki tantalizing glimpses of their private selves - their boyish enthusiasm, their eagerness to please, the flashes of curiosity that have not yet been extinguished. She in turn begins to hint at the existence of a world beyond their own - at such exotic activities as surfing the Internet or traveling freely and, more dangerously, at electoral democracy and other ideas forbidden in a country where defectors risk torture and execution. But when Kim Jong-il dies, and the boys she has come to love appear devastated, she wonders whether the gulf between her world and theirs can ever be bridged.
©2014 Suki Kim (P)2014 Random House Audio
Uden dig er der intet os
Summary
Den fascinerende beretning om det halve år, hvor en journalist underviste den nordkoreanske elites sønner i engelsk. Den amerikanske journalist Suki Kim er født og opvokset i Sydkorea og har altid vaeret optaget af Nordkorea, hvor en del af hendes familiemedlemmer uheldigvis boede, da landet blev delt i to. Da hun i 2011 får mulighed for at tage til landet sammen med en kristen organisation, der skal undervise elitens sønner i engelsk, slår hun til med det samme. På et staerkt bevogtet område afskaermet fra resten af samfundet møder hun de unge studerende, der ved chokerende lidt om resten af verden og udviser total troskab mod styret og Kim Jong-il. Hun naerer en naiv drøm om at åbne deres øjne en smule for omverdenen og går så langt som hun kan under den strenge censur, hun er underlagt. Men som tiden skrider frem, og hun kommer til at holde af de unge maend, går det op for hende, at det sandsynligvis enten få dem slået ihjel eller i det mindste ødelaegge enhver chance for at en tålelig tilvaerelse i det nordkoreanske samfund, hvis hendes projekt lykkes.
©2015 Lindhardt og Ringhof (P)2015 Lindhardt og Ringhof