In her teens, her class spent a month living in tents in the hills, scaling walls, learning to shoot pistols and dismantle Kalashnikovs and surviving on rations. Yet she doesn’t really acknowledge that her own experience of Pyongyang was highly privileged and not reflective of the general population. However, just months after her arrival, her father, the then-president of Equatorial Guinea, Francisco Macías Nguema, was ousted in a bloody coup d'état by her cousin, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. It was as if I had walked onto a movie set and was reciting my lines of dialogue from an approved script. Kim Il-sung could have done the same and sent me back, like Castro sent Teo, but he kept his promise to my father, even though it had no advantage for him.

Monica Marcias: How a girl from Equatorial Guinea was raised

Spending time in Madrid, Malabo, New York, Seoul and finally London, at every step she had to reckon with others’ perceptions of her adoptive homeland. I did not understand why I had to live in that boarding school under such strict discipline at only eight years old. A fascinating account of a woman’s quest for autonomy, and her bravery and determination to find the truth. We Guinean and Beninese children were served in a different room, with food cooked by a different chef as a courtesy to us. In what has been the only free election held in the country to date, he defeated Ondó Edú in the runoff and was sworn in as president on 12 October.She is given a choice at the end of her studies to stay in North Korea where she now has many friends and is comfortable or go and see a world that she knows nothing about. Today, sitting in her publisher’s London offices, what’s noticeable is her gentle manner, avoidance of eye contact and soft Korean accent. Macías stayed in Pyongyang until 1994, when she travelled to Spain, Equatoguinea's former colonial power and the birthplace of her maternal grandfather to learn more about herself and investigate the death of her father. This week, state media in North Korea criticised a report by a US think-tank on scenarios for the collapse of a reclusive country with a grim record of famine, prison camps and nuclear brinkmanship.

My childhood in North Korea with Kim Il-sung and how I survived

Obiang achieved his coup mostly with the help of his cousins with whom he had previously attended a Spanish military academy together and who now headed the military.As he also decided at what time the food would be resold, products would often be expired before they were offered to the public. As our black car drew up in front of the main school building on that hot July day, an old man stood waiting for us in military dress.