Margins
The Ministry of Truth book cover
The Ministry of Truth
Kim Jong-Il's North Korea
2006
First Published
4.06
Average Rating
132
Number of Pages

The few dozen tourists—and a few journalists—who come annually to the North Korean capital of Pyongyang are accompanied by guides and are only allowed to see what the regime blinders for their viewing. For the visitors, actors often represent pedestrians, and the consumer goods seen in stores are unavailable to the public at large. The statistics heaped upon the visitors are dubious at best. Kim Jong Il's People's Republic of North Korea is a gigantic installation, a simulation, a play. Eva Munz, Christian Kracht, and Lukas Nikol traveled to this land to take pictures of a country from which there are no pictures. What they show in The Ministry of Truth is a window view of the gigantic 3-D production of Kim Jong Il, who writes the nation's statistics and authors its film script. Because no accurate view is available of this total installation, the authors make the only one possible: They comment on their photos with quotations from a didactic book on the art of film written by the dictator—who not only collects wine and Mazda RX-7 sports cars, but also has an enormous film library. Christian Kracht is a celebrated journalist and author and the editor of the German cultural magazine Der Freund. The photographs of Eva Munz and Lukas Nikol have had numerous international exhibitions.

Avg Rating
4.06
Number of Ratings
35
5 STARS
26%
4 STARS
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3 STARS
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2 STARS
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1 STARS
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Author

Christian Kracht
Christian Kracht
Author · 13 books

Christian Kracht is a Swiss writer and journalist. Kracht was born in Saanen. His father, Christian Kracht Sr., was chief representative for the Axel Springer publishing company in the 1960s. Kracht attended Schule Schloss Salem in Baden and Lakefield College School in Ontario, Canada. He graduated from Sarah Lawrence College, New York, in 1989.

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