Excerpt from "The Great Successor: The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong Un" by Anna Fifield

This week’s free issue of the newsletter is an excerpt from Anna Fifield’s excellent new book The Great Successor: The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong Un.

Anna became the Washington Post's bureau chief in Beijing last summer, after four years covering Japan and the Koreas for the paper. Before that she was a journalist with the Financial Times for 13 years, four of which she spent in Seoul. 

In The Great Successor, she presents the most complete portrait to date of Kim Jong Un: how he became the leader of North Korea, and how he has remained the leader of North Korea. She describes his abnormal childhood and his totally dysfunctional family, talking to people who knew him during those early years. Then she describes how, after taking over from his father, he has used the nuclear program and an increasingly market-based economy to present himself as a visionary -- and legitimate -- leader. 

North Korea's relationship with China is a constant throughout the book. Thi…