Books/Articles about defectors who secretly escaped their countries

March 10, 2025 9:16 AM

I'm trying to find nonfiction books about people who defected from their home (or host) countries without that country's knowledge.

A couple of books that fit the bill: "A Kim Jong-Il Production" about the abduction and subsequent escape of South Koreans Shin Sang-ok and Choi Eun-hee from North Korea and "The Spy Who Got Away" about former CIA officer Edward Lee Howard's escape to the Soviet Union.

posted by Elle_Dee to Media & Arts (16 answers total)

The Karolyis and Baryshnikov come to mind as people who did that. I can't say I've read any books on either doing it, but here's a list of Baryshnikov's books. and books about Bela. (Though given what Bela was like, I'd be reluctant to read those.)
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:23 AM on March 10 [2 favorites]

Benjamin Weiser's A Secret Life looks to be the recommended book on Ryszard Kukliński (I haven't read it). Oleg Gordievski wrote his own autobiography, Next Stop Execution. Mitrokhin's books are more about the wide activities of the KGB but there should be plenty of exfiltration examples (exfiltration as a term may be useful for your search).

And for people who weren't spies, I'd start with the Checkpoint Charlie Museum. Thousands of people escaped through the Iron Curtain over the decades.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 9:32 AM on March 10 [2 favorites]

Dear Leader is about a North Korean defector.
posted by Ragged Richard at 9:45 AM on March 10 [1 favorite]

Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy (2009) is a study of several people in North Korea, and some who left in various dangerous and tricky ways, and in some cases, how they managed afterwards.
posted by zadcat at 9:54 AM on March 10 [5 favorites]

Cockpit by Jerzy Kosinski, from 1975. I think it was his best and this may provoke me into reading it again.
posted by Rash at 10:39 AM on March 10 [1 favorite]

The Spy and the Traitor by Ben MacIntyre, a non-fic history about Oleg Gordievsky, a Soviet KGB agent who became a double agent working for MI-6. After some years of British service, it came time to pull him out of Moscow in 1985, but extracting a spy who is under suspicion is a tricky thing.
posted by Sunburnt at 11:52 AM on March 10 [4 favorites]

This may be too niche, but there is a lot of cloak and dagger involved in hockey players defecting from behind the iron curtain, particularly Alex Mogilny. A compendium book is here.

I believe there are similar examples in other sports and nations, for example Cuban baseball players, Russian chess players, Czech hockey players, and others - one of the best known being Tennis great Martina Navrátilová (not a very eventful defection but one nonetheless).

You might find this wiki list a good source of leads? Also this list of lists of defectors. Wiki has lists of everything it seems....
posted by Rumple at 12:28 PM on March 10 [2 favorites]

The Stastny brothers defecting from Czechoslovakia in the eighties was a giant deal for Canada and hockey and the NHL and the Cold War.

(they played for the Nordiques. Je me souvien.)

The Wikipedia article I linked is pretty thin but if you hit up a news archive there will be tons of coverage. And on edit I see that Rumple linked to a book about this very subject.
posted by Sauce Trough at 1:01 PM on March 10 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: Oh wow, so many incredible stories to dig into! Thank you, everyone!
posted by Elle_Dee at 1:09 PM on March 10

Response by poster: @Rumple and @Sauce Trough, I am very excited to read about hockey defections.
posted by Elle_Dee at 1:14 PM on March 10 [2 favorites]

Arkady Shevchenko is on Rumple's list of defectors, above. He wrote about his life in Russia and his defection in Breaking with Moscow. I read it a couple of times back in its day.

Viktor Belenko is also on Rumple's list. He piloted a new MiG fighter out of Russia and handed it over to Western authorities. His book was also quite entertaining.
posted by bryon at 4:00 PM on March 10 [1 favorite]

Seconding Derick’s Nothing to Envy. It is so well written, engrossing, and moving. I think it meets the gold standard for non-fiction. I first saw it recommended here, and even though I read it years ago, I still think about it frequently.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 5:14 PM on March 10 [3 favorites]

Would Kim Phuc’s defection to Canada from Vietnam fit the bill? “ In October 1992, Kim Phuc and her husband managed to buy plane tickets to Gander, in North-east Canada, where they pleaded for asylum. The couple moved to Toronto where they spent the next three years in hiding.” Edited to add the actual book, The Girl in the Picture.
posted by t0astie at 11:00 PM on March 10 [1 favorite]

The Chief Witness by Sayragul Sauytbay. The book describes the author's internment in a Xinjiang concentration camp, it also has descriptions of how China encroached on Xinjiang and built settlements and forts there. Descriptions of rape and torture and describes how the author fled from China to Kazakhstan, where she could not get asylum. Ultimately she and her family went to Sweden to live.
posted by Didnt_do_enough at 6:46 AM on March 11 [1 favorite]

The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector's Story by Hyeonseo Lee. It's an incredible memoir, highly recommended!
posted by leftover_scrabble_rack at 10:02 AM on March 11 [1 favorite]

For something recent, the NYTimes magazine had an article about a Russian officer defecting, and a lot of background on why more people don't/can't defect.
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 9:11 PM on March 11 [2 favorites]