10. September, 2021
11:00Friday September 10
11:00
The Nordic House
Barbara Demick is an award-winning American journalist and writer best known for her work on human rights and economic and social unrest in Eastern Europe and Asia. Demick has written three novels that deal in one way or another with ideas about war and closed societies. Demick’s first novel, Logavina Street: Life and Death in a Sarajevo Neighborhood, was published in 1996 and deals with the Bosnian war and how it divided the people of Logavina Street in Sarajevo, where for centuries families of different religions had lived in harmony. In her second novel, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea (2009), the stories of the fates of six North Korean refugees are intertwined, telling of daily life and the cruel fate of this most isolated country in the world. That book attracted a lot of attention and went on a triumphant journey around the world.
In her latest work, the novel Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town (2020), Barbara Demick sheds light on a culture that has long been romanticized by Westerners as spiritual and peaceful. It shows what it really means to be a modern-day Tibetan, trying to preserve their culture, religion and language.
