Anna Fifield is the Beijing bureau chief for TheWashington Post. She previously covered Japan and the Koreas for the Post, and was the Seoul correspondent for the Financial Times. She has reported from more than twenty countries and has visited North Korea a dozen times, becoming one of the most authoritative journalists on this impenetrable country. She was a Nieman journalism fellow at Harvard University, studying how change happens in closed societies. In 2018, she received the Shorenstein Journalism Award from Stanford University for her outstanding reporting on Asia.
"Anna Fifield sheds new light on North Korea's leader in her
biography of the absolute dictator...putting pretty much all the
currently available information between the covers of a single book
represents a welcome contribution to the literature."
--Brad Martin, Asia Times
"The Great Successor is a tour de force of reporting. Anna Fifield
has penetrated the secrecy and myths surrounding Kim Jong Un to
provide a remarkable, multi-layered portrait of North Korea's
youthful and enigmatic leader. The ruler depicted in this book,
which is based on Fifield's interviews with an impressive range of
people who have had contact with Kim or experience inside his
system, plus insights gleaned from her own travel as a journalist
in North Korea, is not the bomb-throwing 'rocket man' so often
mocked and caricatured. Instead, Kim Jong Un comes across as smart,
ruthless, diplomatically savvy, and determined to survive at all
costs. An essential guide to understanding the man who could well
be in charge of North Korea for decades."--Mike Chinoy, former CNN
senior Asia correspondent and author of Meltdown: The Inside Story
of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis
"The Great Successor is essential reading for anyone seeking
insight on one of the world's least-understood
leaders."--Washington Post
"The Great Successor shows how a pudgy young heir to tyranny-using
fratricide, nuclear terror, crony capitalism, and strategic
flattery of a vain American president-has become a sure-footed
Machiavelli for the twenty-first century. In this devastating
portrait of the latest dictator named Kim, Anna Fifield expertly
dissects North Korea's first family of despotism."--Blaine Harden,
author of Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from
North Korea to Freedom in the West
"A compelling mix of biography, cultural history, and political
intrigue."--Kirkus, Starred Review
"A vivid portrait of an ambitious, paranoid young
dictator."--AXIOS
"An important, riveting, and detailed account of the rise of Kim
Jong Un. Anna Fifield, who is an intrepid reporter and a lively
writer, breaks important new ground in The Great Successor. Drawing
on a broad array of sources, including remarkable defector
accounts, she paints a disturbing portrait of a country fueled by
heady delusions of military strength; a potent, bizarre ideology;
an unflinching devotion to nuclear weapons; and a disturbing
addiction to crystal methamphetamine. Spoiler alert: be prepared
for a lot of gore."--Evans J.R. Revere, senior advisor with the
Albright Stonebridge Group and former senior state department
official with 50 years of experience working on Korea
"Anna Fifield owns the North Korea story today in a way that few
other journalists, myself included, have ever been able to claim
mastery over this most elusive subject."--Barbara Demick, author of
the bestselling Nothing to Envy
"Anna Fifield's The Great Successor is elegantly written and
exhaustively researched. Fifield tracks down everyone outside North
Korea who has met Kim, from school friends to servants to family
members in hiding under false names...The story Fifield tells, as
befits the supreme ruler of a bizarrely unique country, is vivid to
say the least."--The Guardian
"Fun to read.... The Great Successor brims with important and
exclusive information"--Financial Times
"Gripping....Fifield weaves the story skillfully....Throughout, she
peppers her brisk narrative with just the right dose of humor,
irony and cynicism."--Japan Times
"I loved reading Anna Fifield when she had the Korea beat for the
Post, and now she has outdone herself with the first English
language biography of the most opaque and mysterious leader in the
world. Carefully crafted from her reporting with additional
research, field work, and exclusive interviews with those close to
and in the Kim family, The Great Successor peels back the layers to
reveal Kim Jong Un's psyche and the ominous future of the country
over which he presides. A must read for the general and expert
reader!"--Victor Cha, Korea chair at the Center for International
and Strategic Studies and author of The Impossible State: North
Korea, Past and Future
"I'm in awe of the author's devotion to the people searching for
freedom."--Thae Yong Ho, North Korean Deputy Ambassador to the
United Kingdom, who defected in 2016
"Impeccably researched. The prose is lively. Ms. Fifield writes
with wit and dark humor about a murderous and increasingly
dangerous dictator...This book provides a valuable perspective on
this formidable adversary and one of our most vexing foreign-policy
challenges."--HR McMaster, the Wall Street Journal
"Intelligent, insightful, sometimes comic, and also worrying: Anna
Fifield has written a vivid, compelling, and, above all,
illuminating portrait of a rogue family's rule over the world's
most reclusive nation."--General David Petraeus (US Army, Ret.),
director of the CIA when Kim Jong Un became leader
"More than a biography; The Great Successor is also an important
portrait of a nation that will present enormous challenges to the
world."--Nicholas Kristof, New York Times
"Mr. Kim's sordid story is expertly detailed by veteran Asian
correspondent Anna Fifield...She supplements her eyes-on reporting
with accounts from scores of interviews of persons who escaped Mr.
Kim's purgatory."--Washington Times
"North Korea watchers will walk away from The Great Successor with
a fuller picture of a changing North Korea and its people, as well
as a rich tapestry of interesting anecdotes about the young
leader's life. More casual observers, in turn, could not ask for a
better introduction to an enigmatic country and its curious
leadership."--NK News
"So refreshing...[Fifield] has collated what is probably the
current maximum of what can be known about the leader of a
secretive, nuclear-armed state...In an environment where the US
debate over North Korea is most often defined by hysterics and
saber-rattling, a balanced account like Fifield's is
crucial."--Jacobin Magazine
"The veteran Washington Post correspondent has produced a macabre
portrait of a ruling dynasty that has inexplicably survived for
seven decades."--Los Angeles Times
"There is, quite simply, no journalist in any language who has done
more to unearth and tell the astounding story of Kim Jong Un than
Anna Fifield. The Great Successor slashes through myths to yield
the first essential and vivid biography of the man and his
era."--Evan Osnos, author of Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune,
Truth, and Faith in the New China
"With a journalist's eye for detail and with the gift of a
storyteller, Anna Fifield has written the quintessential bible on
Kim Jong Un. No one working to solve the North Korean puzzle should
let The Great Successor sit on a bookshelf; it's a
must-read."--Ambassador Wendy R. Sherman, former undersecretary of
state for political affairs and author of Not for the Faint of
Heart: Lessons in Courage, Power, and Persistence
A Financial Times Best Book of the Year
 |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
