Fascinating memoir. Monica Macias has led a very interesting and unexpected life, from growing up the daughter of a man remembered as a brutal dictator of Equatorial Guinea to being raised in North Korea under the protection of Kim Il-sung to her humble travels around the world to better understand her identity. The siblings were all enrolled in the Mangyongdae Revolutionary School on the outskirts of Pyongyang, a boarding establishment for children of party members – all fatherless – where Kim’s nephew, who had a direct line to him, was deputy director. Another photo from the time shows the trio standing to attention in a uniform of peaked caps and belted, brass-buttoned blazers with epaulettes. Monica resolved to visit another of her cousins, now Equatorial Guinea’s ambassador in Beijing. Arriving in the Chinese capital, using her Equatorial Guinean passport, she could find no one who spoke English (which she’d studied at school). A white man approached her and asked if she needed help. Monica, hearing his US accent, was petrified and ran away. “My reaction was normal. It was how I’d been brought up. The West was evil, especially Americans. There couldn’t have been any other way. That was the consequence of being brainwashed.”

The life story of Monica is a very unique and is certainly worth reading. However, I feel like a lot of information of her research towards her father is left out, not mentioning one negative aspect of his leadership.From this point onwards, my attitude changed, hardening from my natural ebullience into an overt rebellion against authority and hierarchy. I did not understand why I had to live in that boarding school under such strict discipline at only eight years old. I was one of three girls in my class who vied for dominance over the others. I spoke disrespectfully to others and showed little regard for Korean social ranking according to age, for which one of my sister’s classmates took me to task.

This may sound harsh, but whenever she does try and expose her value system, her prose is reminiscent of an undergraduate-level politics essay. Grand statements that mean very little, waffly overarching generalisations, 'love don't hate'-style statements... such a missed opportunity, so many glaring omissions, and yet a lot of time is devoted to her time as a Leroy Merlin employee - only Spanish readers and/or anyone sufficiently acquainted with the Spanish home furniture market will realise how bonkers that sentence is. If there were any, she claimed, the differences might have come from a limited understanding of each other. The book, first published in 2013 in Korean, now published in English, is a diary of sorts, covering events and people over many decades. The authors father is ousted as President of EG, however she remains a guest of NK, enjoying patronage at the highest levels. Her lifestyle is pampered and entitled although naturally isolated from the world outside of NK. She views NK through the eyes of a diplomatic, an invited expatriate, with special status, privileges and freedoms. I am glad to tell you that you have the privilege of studying at the Mangyŏngdae Revolutionary Boarding School,’ he said. Optimistic yet unflinching, Monica’s astonishing and unique story challenges us to see the world through different eyes.

The Sydney Morning Herald

Initially, this effectively orphaned child cried herself to sleep. At one point she went on a hunger strike and ended up in hospital for a month. “I just wanted my mother,” she says. This is the story of Monica Macias, daughter of the former first president of Equatorial Guinea Francisco Macias, he sent her and two siblings to North Korea to be taken care of by his friend Kim Il Sung and shortly after this he was executed leaving them to grow up there and to know this as home. Macias is the daughter of the late Francisco Macias, the erstwhile leader (/dictator) of Equatorial Guinea, which attained its independence from its coloniser Spain in 1968. Macias allows her own experience, and her experience alone, to determine her thoughts and opinions on North Korean society (and on her father, widely considered to have been one of Africa’s most brutal dictators). While I didn't always agree with her conclusions, I did really appreciate her writing. Her experiences have shaped her perspectives, and that can't be entirely discounted, though her perspectives are largely positive. There were some fairly significant points that weren't really touched on though, such as the human rights violations, so I wish Macias had dedicated a bit more discussion to this in her writing.