The date was January 28, 1945. I WOKE UP AT DAWN on January 29. On my father’s cot there lay another sick person. They must have taken him away before daybreak and taken him to the crematorium. Perhaps he was still breathing … No prayers were said over his tomb. No candle lit in his memory. His last word had been my name. He had called out to me an

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But once rumours started going around that the Soviet Union had collapsed some years earlier, the grown-ups began whispering about the poor shape the Republic was in. Chongjin had it better than other cities, though not as good as Pyongyang, of course; even so, there were times when rations were cut off for two months and then three months, and sha

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With his life savings and a bundle of spare clothes, Motiram climbed aboard and joined the great migration. Shipside, conditions had improved since indenture's dawn, when "coolies" were accommodated scarcely better than the slaves who had occupied their berths only a few years before. Public outcry in Britain and India had led to reforms

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