North Korea is a country that many consider to be a huge prison in itself. Inside that country are closely guarded detention centres housing hundreds of thousands of prisoners. And inside those camps are underground prisons... American journalist Blaine Harden has written the unlikely story of Shin Dong-hyuk's escape from Camp 14, which eventually took him all the way to South Korea and the United States.
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Dream Heart, by Cecilia Samartin, is a moving and beautiful story from Cuba. It follows two cousins, Nora and Alicia, who grow up together in Cuba in the 1950s. They live a sheltered and privileged existence, with the black maid Beba and the Catholic nuns at school. When Castro comes to power, their lives are turned upside down.
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Silvia Avallone's debut novel depicts a very different Italy from the one we see on our holidays. There are no vines or beaches with colourful umbrellas in the background. Instead, the world pulses around the steelworks, where the intense heat is slamming, and where someone occasionally loses a hand.
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I have just finished reading Barbara Demicks' fascinating book on North Korea. Ms Demicks is a journalist and has been to North Korea herself, but the book is not based on her own visit. Foreign guests are shown a carefully planned backdrop of perfection on rigidly guided tours of the capital Pyongyang, and Demicks wanted to get behind that backdrop. She chose to set the story in the northern city of Chongjin, and based the story on the lives of a number of North Korean defectors.
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The island is a microscopic speck in the Pacific Ocean. The beaches are white, the sea is endless and the islanders dance for the tourists whenever a boat happens to pass by. This is the real paradise - or is it? The island belongs to the British colonial power, and although British culture feels more than remote, British law applies. Suspicions of sexual abuse lead to the arrival of three British social workers to investigate.
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My Life as a Traitor, by Zarah Ghahramani, is about the then 20-year-old Zarah's time in an Iranian prison. Terrible, it may seem, and it is. But the most interesting thing is to read about the journey there: growing up in a middle-class Iranian family, university studies and teenage life with ordinary girl talk about boys and love and clothes, with the only difference being that the mullahs' religious rules are everywhere like a shadow.
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Helena Thorfinn's debut novel 'Innan floden tar oss' takes us to Dhaka, Bangladesh. Here we follow two completely different stories, which in the end become intertwined.
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Jillian is a lost American 18-year-old studying theatre and supporting herself by working as a stripper. Her rootlessness and constant search for thrills leads her to take up a spectacular offer to join Prince Jefri's harem in the salty state of Brunei as a luxury prostitute.
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I'm home with a bad cold, and the only good thing about it is that I've been able to read The Battler by Mikey Walsh. Mikey grows up in a gypsy camp in 1980s England. His family are famous boxers and even before he is born, his father has big plans for his boxing career. When it turns out that Mikey has no talent for fighting, his father's anger is aroused and Mikey suffers brutal and regular abuse throughout his childhood.
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The books that have moved me the most are often those that tell stories about people in another country, in another time. They can be real destinies, but they can also be fictional stories in a realistic setting. Of course, there are never a single Truth and a story can be told in many different ways, but if you hear many people's stories, the story becomes a little more complete over time.
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