Nothing to Envy

I just read a book that made we want to sit and sob.

North Korea today is a  country  of deep darkness, full of evil leaders and hellish life.    This book covers life in North Korea all the way up to June 2009; the horrific life that Barbara Demick writes about is happening now! You can read my review here and then check it out at the library or buy it here.  This book has given me a passion to pray for this people like nothing else ever has.  Nothing to Envy covers the dismal lives of six North Koreans, the absolute devotion many of them have for “The Great Leader,” and their eventual escape from North Korea.

A North Korean doctor is stung by the realization that although she has faithfully and faultlessly served the regime all her life, she is under surveillance and finally has to consider escaping North Korea.

Finally across the river and in China, “Dr. Kim looked down a dirt road that led to farmhouses.  Most of them had walls around them with metal gates.  She tried one; it turned out to be unlocked.  She pushed it open and peered inside.  On the ground she saw a small metal bowl with food.  She looked closer- it was rice, white rice, mixed with scraps of meat.  Dr. Kim couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen a bowl of pure white rice.  What was a bowl of rice, mixed with scraps of meat doing there, just sitting on the ground?  She figured it out just before she heard the dog’s bark.

Up until that moment, a part of her had hoped that China would be just as poor as North Korea.  She still wanted to believe that her country was the best place in the world.  The beliefs she had cherished for a lifetime would be vindicated.  But now she couldn’t deny what was staring her plainly in the face: dogs in China ate better than doctors in North Korea.”

I have been reading all sorts of communist leaning books, and another  is Anna Karenina.

Anna Karenina, now, that was always a book not to read.  First of all it’s Tolstoy, so that means many characters and every character has twenty-three nick names.  And then with Tolstoy there’s always the Russian depression behind the novel which makes you want to slit your wrists.

But no, all my preconceived Tolstoy notions  have been proven wrong!  It is like a Russian Jane Austen.  Tolstoy has so much insight into the nature of man and the nuances of human character.  He does have a tendency to drone on about politics via his various characters but when you muddle through that and get back to the story line, it is an exellent book.

And just one more worth mentioning, not communist but a Muslim story, is The Book Seller of Kabul which I have also reviewed and you can read that here.  Apart from Christianity, the way women are treated is abysmal even today.

Any books you’ve encountered that really made you stop and think about this world we live in?