Michael Breen's portrait of Kim Jong-il is a compelling psychoanalysis of the world's last Stalinist dictator. The book explains how Kim manages to maintain an iron grip over his poverty-stricken country while holding the world's only superpower to ransom with weapons of mass destruction. In parts the book reads like a black comedy, so bizarre is the regime it describes. Breen combines his eye for farce with a keen sensitivity to the plight of North Korea's 22 million oppressed and starving people. But he makes clear it is too simplistic to dismiss Kim as an evil madman. Breen shows how North Korea is an accident of history, trapped in a Cold War time warp from which Kim is unable to escape....