Skip to main content
Trade Books For Courses Tradebooks for Courses

Pyongyang

A Journey in North Korea

Drawn and Quarterly

opens in a new window
opens in a new window Pyongyang Download image

ISBN10: 1770463372
ISBN13: 9781770463370

Paperback

192 Pages

$18.95

Request Desk Copy
Request Exam Copy

TRADE BOOKS FOR COURSES NEWSLETTER

Sign up to receive information about new books, author events, and special offers.

Sign up now

Guy Delisle’s Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea is the graphic novel that made his career, an international bestseller for more than ten years. Delisle became one of the few Westerners to be allowed access to the fortress-like country when he was working in animation for a French company.

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. 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. 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.

Pyongyang is an informative, personal, and accessible look at a dangerous and enigmatic country.

Reviews

Praise for Pyongyang

“A rare first-hand look at life inside North Korea.”—The New York Review of Books

“Delisle chronicles the surreal nature of this hidden city filled with NGO workers, diplomats and a total absence of, say, dissidents and disabled people.”—Rolling Stone

Pyongyang [is] a quick read. Yet it repays careful scrutiny.”—The Guardian