During my flu season I have been reading Tina Thunander's "Travelling in Sharialand. A report on women's lives in Saudi Arabia". Tina is quite lost when she lands in the kingdom, but is soon given a lesson in the state of affairs by the Ministry of Information's envoy.
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When I read Sofi Oksanen's Purge, I found her storytelling to be magical. Her debut novel Stalin's Cows did not disappoint either. The language here is perhaps even more straightforward, and a little less polished, as it rushes across the pages.
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Morning in Jenin, by Susan Abulhawa, can be seen as a contribution to the infected Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and as an outside media consumer it is difficult to understand all aspects of it. However, it is not difficult to follow the protagonist Amal and how her increasingly decimated family makes its way through decades of conflict, war, displacement and refugeeism.
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I started reading Sarah's Key, by Tatiana de Rosnay, and then I didn't want to put it down. When the French police knock on Sarah's family's door in Paris in 1942, she hides her little brother in the closet, locks the door and puts the key in her pocket ...
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I have just read, and can recommend, Niceville by Kathryn Stockett. The book follows three women, the white socialite Skeeter and the two black maids Aibileen and Minny, in the American South in the 1960s.
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Here is a book tip that is also a film tip. Li Cunxin grows up as a poor peasant boy in communist China. His family barely has enough food for the day, but he learns early on that, thanks to Chairman Mao, he lives in the richest country in the world. Imagine how terrible the people in the capitalist world must be!
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Peter read Three Seconds in the summer of 2009. I remember exactly when he opened the first page. We were on the ferry between Ystad and Swinoujscie at the time, heading down to Europe with the camper van. After just a few lines, he looked up and asked "What is the name of this boat?".
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Even silence has an end is Ingrid Betancourt's account of her time in the hands of the FARC guerrillas. For six years, the French-Colombian politician was a prisoner in the Colombian jungle. This is a book that kept me hooked from the first page to the last.
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Here's another film tip for a rainy summer evening. The Adjustment Bureau is science fiction, thriller and drama at the same time. Matt Damon plays a young politician with a promising career. When he meets the woman of his dreams, Elise, Fate (played by costumed men from a Divine Authority) steps in to stop the relationship.
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Imagine waking up, in a foreign country, after an accident and four days in a coma. You remember who you are and what your business is in the country, but no one believes you are you and your wife calls another man by your name.
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