Andorra

Death Has a Thousand Doors by Patricia W. Grey

Family complications abound in this mystery set in the little-known Pyrenean country of Andorra. Jane Burns, an Australian accountant, is a recovering alcoholic with a troubled past. When she receives a letter inviting her to visit Andorra for the winding up of her grandfather's multi-million dollar Trust, she jumps at the opportunity to leave her humdrum life and troubles behind. She expects to stay with her half-sister, Pearl, a photo journalist who moved to Andorra to escape an abusive marriage, but on her arrival Pearl is missing without explanation. The only clue to her whereabouts is an unlikely welcoming gift to Jane of a bottle of champagne. Jane and Pearl's father, Charles, an aloof historian, becomes Jane's ally in the search for Pearl. In a twisted web starting from the founding of the Family Trust after the Second World War, and involving financial misdoings, kidnapping and tobacco smuggling, Jane and Charles try to discover which threads will lead them to Pearl, and which are simply the detritus of her daily life as an investigative journalist. On the way, Jane meets a sympathetic village policeman. She also meets Pearl's lover, a prominent Andorran politician. But are these two men helping or hindering the investigation?

My Thoughts:

Andorra is yet another country that I didn't even know existed.  Andorra sounds like a kingdom from a fairy tale story.  For some reason I am always surprised to hear of a country for the first time.  Didn't I have geography classes in highschool? I loved getting to know this micro-country between France and Spain.  I would love to visit there someday.

The book is a mystery and started out being very descriptive of the country and quite fun to read, but I felt like it fell flat in the end.  You hope for a great ending with momentum and twists and I didn't get that from this story.  I mostly enjoyed it for what I learned about Andorra.

My Ratings:

Well written:  Up until the end

Easy to follow:  Yes

Held my attention:  Yes

Would I recommend this to a friend:  hmmm. . . maybe
Did it represent the country: Yes

Content:

Sexual Content: You know that the couple is sleeping together, but it does not go into details except for one sentence.  May be inappropriate for teenagers.

Violence: mild

Genre: Mystery

Pages: 316

Rwanda

Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

Immaculee Ilibagiza grew up in a country she loved, surrounded by a family she cherished. But in 1994 her idyllic world was ripped apart as Rwanda descended into a bloody genocide. Immaculee’s family was brutally murdered during a killing spree that lasted three months and claimed the lives of nearly a million Rwandans.

Incredibly, Immaculee survived the slaughter. For 91 days, she and seven other women huddled silently together in the cramped bathroom of a local pastor while hundreds of machete-wielding killers hunted for them. 

It was during those endless hours of unspeakable terror that Immaculee discovered the power of prayer, eventually shedding her fear of death and forging a profound and lasting relationship with God. She emerged from her bathroom hideout having discovered the meaning of truly unconditional love—a love so strong she was able seek out and forgive her family’s killers.

The triumphant story of this remarkable young woman’s journey through the darkness of genocide will inspire anyone whose life has been touched by fear, suffering, and loss.

My Thoughts:

It's not very often that I read a book that changes me.  I am religious and have seen the power of prayer in my life, but having read this book, I have learned a whole new level of the power of prayer.  

I had vaguely heard of the genocide of Rwanda and as I was looking for a book set in Rwanda to read, I knew that it was going to be a heavy one.  I picked this book because I had read a description of it somewhere that it was not a detailed account of the whole genocide, but one person's story about how she opened her heart to God and love in order to not just survive physically, but emotionally as well.  I assumed that from that description that this book wouldn't be so much about the gory details and I looked forward to reading an account of triumph during dire circumstances.

This book does actually include many gory details of the genocide, mostly of her own experience. I had to do some research to learn how a country could get to a place where neighbor could rise up against neighbor and start murdering each other in the street until a million people had been killed using mostly machetes.  It is a harrowing story to read, but in the end, I was glad that I had.

My Ratings:

Well written:  Yes

Easy to follow:  Yes

Held my attention:  Yes

Would I recommend this to a friend:  Yes
Did it represent the country: Yes

Content:

Sexual Content: mentions of raping

Violence: extremely

Genre: Autobiography, Memoir

Pages: 214

Luxembourg

Milly's Story by Milly Thill

"Milly's Story" is a testimony of the author's personal experiences as a 10-15 year old girl during the Nazi occupation of Luxembourg in the Second World War. Her vibrant, authentic chronicles, especially the episodes of the Liberation by U.S. troops and life with American soldiers, such as Christmas Eve 1944, are moving and thrilling accounts based on historical context. "The Young Girl's Memories of the Second World War" is dedicated to all the U.S. soldiers who fought in the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg for the liberty of her nation. It is also dedicated to the numerous descendants of those who migrated from Luxembourg to the United States, especially in Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois.

My Thoughts:

To be honest, I didn't know that Luxembourg was a country.  I thought is was a city in Britain.  Once again, I'm learning geography.  

I loved this book because it gives yet another perspective of WWII.  I have often wondered what the war was like for the non-Jewish people.  How did so many of them go along with the genocide?  I have learned that they didn't know the magnitude of what was happening in the concentration camps.  This book reads like a diary of a young girl who was not Jewish, but lived during a Nazi Occupation of her country.  I now better understand the hardships they endured and I have better sympathy for them too.

I especially enjoyed getting to know the country of Luxembourg and would love to visit there someday.  I would not have realized that without having read this book.

My Ratings:

Well written:  Yes

Easy to follow:  Yes

Held my attention:  Yes

Would I recommend this to a friend:  Yes
Did it represent the country: Yes

Content:

Sexual Content: No

Violence: WWII

Genre: Memoir

Pages: 216

Ghana

Wife of the Gods by Kwei Quartey

Introducing Detective Inspector Darko Dawson: dedicated family man, rebel in the office, ace in the field—and one of the most appealing sleuths to come along in years. When we first meet Dawson, he’s been ordered by his cantankerous boss to leave behind his loving wife and young son in Ghana’s capital city to lead a murder investigation: In a shady grove outside the small town of Ketanu, a young woman—a promising medical student—has been found dead under suspicious circumstances. Dawson is fluent in Ketanu’s indigenous language, so he’s the right man for the job, but the local police are less than thrilled with an outsider’s interference. For Dawson, this sleepy corner of Ghana is rife with emotional land mines: an estranged relationship with the family he left behind twenty-five years earlier and the painful memory of his own mother’s inexplicable disappearance. Armed with remarkable insight and a healthy dose of skepticism, Dawson soon finds his cosmopolitan sensibilities clashing with age-old customs, including a disturbing practice in which teenage girls are offered to priests as trokosi, or Wives of the Gods. Delving deeper into the student’s haunting death, Dawson will uncover long-buried secrets that, to his surprise, hit much too close to home.

My Thoughts:

I did not finish this book.  Looking back now at the description it seems obvious to me that this book would not be a good fit for me. It is hard when I spend too much time trying to find the right book and have to pick the best from a bad bunch that I don't really actually know very well.  

I always try to get a least halfway through a book before I move on to another one.  Often times a book will pick up or I will become more interested in it by then.  This did not happen with this book. This book became too "soap opera-ish" to me, which doesn't hold my interest.  I was disappointed because Ghana seems like a fascinating country to learn about.  I can watch documentaries, but there is something about spending time in a book that is more satisfying to me.

My Ratings:

Well written:  Yes

Easy to follow:  Yes

Held my attention:  Not really, I got bored

Would I recommend this to a friend:  No
Did it represent the country: Somewhat

Content:

Sexual Content: Yes, descriptive, but not pornographic.  There may have been more in the last half of the book that I did not read.

Violence: It is a murder investigation

Genre: Mystery

Pages: 317

Algeria

The Stranger by Albert Camus

Through the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach, Camus explored what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd." 

My Thoughts:

I was drawn to this book because it was considered a classic, though I had never heard of it. I think this book would have been fun to read in a philosophy class as there was much to ponder about this book. There could have been some great discussions.  

To read it as a novel, for the pleasure of reading, left it feeling boring and anti-climatic. I didn't learn much about the country of Algeria either so I was left quite disappointed.  There weren't a lot of books to choose from for Algeria. Fortunately, it was short.

My Ratings:

Well written:  Somewhat

Easy to follow:  Yes

Held my attention:  Somewhat

Would I recommend this to a friend:  No
Did it represent the country: No

Content:

Sexual Content: Mentioned, but not descriptive

Violence: Yes

Genre: Classic

Pages: 123

Bolivia

I am a Taxi by Deborah Ellis

For twelve-year-old Diego and his family, home is the San Sebastian Women’s Prison in Cochabamba, Bolivia. His parents farmed coca, a traditional Bolivian medicinal plant, until they got caught in the middle of the government’s war on drugs. Diego’s adjusted to his new life. His parents are locked up, but he can come and go: to school, to the market to sell his mother’s hand-knitted goods, and to work as a “taxi”, running errands for other prisoners. But then his little sister runs away, earning his mother a heavy fine. The debt and dawning realization of his hopeless situation make him vulnerable to his friend Mando’s plan to make big money, fast. Soon, Diego is deep in the jungle, working as a virtual slave in an illegal cocaine operation. As his situation becomes more and more dangerous, he knows he must take a terrible risk if he ever wants to see his family again.

My Thoughts:

I am a Taxi is a fictional story based on circumstances that are real for people in Bolivia.  The country is overrun with the cocaine industry and the government, trying to get a handle on it.  The prisons in Bolivia are so infamous that you can find a number of documentaries based on life inside these prisons.  Parents and their children live together inside these prisons.  They have their own ways of making money to pay rent for their prison cells, otherwise they will end up sleeping on the hard ground out in the open.

This is a story about how, in struggling countries, hard working people with good hearts end up getting in tough situations and then choose to get involved in illegal acts in order to fix their situation, but then end up worse-off still.  This book was eye opening to big issues that third world countries deal with today.

My Ratings:

Well written:  Yes

Easy to follow:  Yes

Held my attention:  Yes

Would I recommend this to a friend:  Yes
Did it represent the country: Yes

Content:

Sexual Content: No

Violence: Mild

Genre: Realistic Fiction

Pages: 208

Albania

Chronicle in Stone by Ismail Kadare

Masterful in its simplicity, Chronicle in Stone is a touching coming-of-age story and a testament to the perseverance of the human spirit. Surrounded by the magic of beautiful women and literature, a boy must endure the deprivations of war as he suffers the hardships of growing up. His sleepy country has just thrown off centuries of tyranny, but new waves of domination inundate his city. Through the boy's eyes, we see the terrors of World War II as he witnesses fascist invasions, allied bombings, partisan infighting, and the many faces of human cruelty as well as the simple pleasures of life. 

Evacuating to the countryside, he expects to find an ideal world full of extraordinary things but discovers instead an archaic backwater where a severed arm becomes a talisman and deflowered girls mysteriously vanish. Woven between the chapters of the boy's story are tantalizing fragments of the city's history. As the devastation mounts, the fragments lose coherence, and we perceive firsthand how the violence of war destroys more than just buildings and bridges.

My Thoughts:

I had heard of Albania, but before this book I wouldn't have known where to locate it, or even what continent it is on for that matter.  One of the reasons why this project of reading a book from every country has been so fun is that I am learning geography like I never have before.

Albania was another country that was hard to find a book from.  I'm realizing that a lot of countries are this way.  It is crazy to think that some countries don't have an abundance of literature available to them in their own languages.  Having an extreme wealth of books available to me in my native language is something I have grossly taken for granted.

Whenever I read a book set in a different country, I take a lot time looking at photos and watching documentaries from that country.  Albania, and specifically the citadel of Gjirokaster, where this book takes place, were fascinating to learn about.  I didn't know that cities of stone built on such steep topography really existed.  I thought they only existed in fairy tales and fantasy movies.

This book was slow, but I made it through.  I was glad that I did because it is based on the true story of the authors childhood.  It is yet another perspective of WWII.  I have learned that there was a vast difference in the development level of different cities during this time period.  Many small, mountain villages lived very primitively still.  I've come across this same realization as I've read other books set in the same time period.  As I was reading Eleni, which is set in Greece during the same time as this book, it mentioned Albanian villages on the border of Greece.  My mind immediately remembered what was going on at the same time in Albania because I had previously read this book.  It was an odd feeling to have two books converge unexpectedly the way these two did.  All in all, I enjoyed researching and viewing photos from this country more than reading this book.

My Ratings:

Well written:  No

Easy to follow:  It took some getting use to

Held my attention:  It was hard

Would I recommend this to a friend:  No
Did it represent the country: Yes

Content:

Sexual content:  Some indirect references to sexual orientation

Violence:  Yes
Genre:  Historical

Pages: 301

Germany

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

It’s just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery. . . .

Set during World War II in Germany, Markus Zusak’s groundbreaking new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement before he is marched to Dachau.

This is an unforgettable story about the ability of books to feed the soul.

My Thoughts:

When I heard that this book was written from the perspective of Death as the narrator, I thought it would be too strange for me to enjoy.  Throughout this book I didn't feel like it was Death talking, but occasionally Death speaks as if it were a person.  Sounds creepy, but during this time of war, holocaust, and suffering, creepy seems appropriate.  

This book consumed me as I consumed it.  At the end, I was mad that so many people told me that they loved this book.  It is too tragic to love, but too moving not to read.  Thinking back on this book, a year later, I have to admit that I liked it, since I have gotten over the sadness of it.

The Book Thief is a different take on the holocaust.  The author says that he wrote this book based on stories he heard from older family members growing up.  It is a true historical fiction.

My Ratings:

Well written:  Yes

Easy to follow:  Yes

Held my attention:  Yes

Would I recommend this to a friend:  Yes
Did it represent the country: Yes

Content:

Explicit Language:  Yes

Sexual Content: Mild

Violence: Yes

Genre: Historical Fiction

Pages: 552

Cuba

Skeleton Key by Anthony Horowitz

Alex Rider has been through a lot for his fourteen years. He's been shot at by international terrorists, chased down a mountainside on a makeshift snowboard, and has stood face-to-face with pure evil. Twice, young Alex has managed to save the world. And twice, he has almost been killed doing it. But now Alex faces something even more dangerous. The desperation of a man who has lost everything he cared for: his country and his only son. A man who just happens to have a nuclear weapon and a serious grudge against the free world. To see his beloved Russia once again be a dominant power, he will stop at nothing. Unless Alex can stop him first... Uniting forces with America's own CIA for the first time, teen spy Alex Rider battles terror from the sun-baked beaches of Miami all the way to the barren ice fields of northernmost Russia. Come along for the thrilling ride of a lifetime.

My Thoughts:

It was hard to find something set in Cuba.  I had read so many depressing books from other countries that when I came across a Spy novel set in Cuba I decided, why not?  It was nice to have something a little on the lighter side.  

Skeleton Key is a very typical Teen-Lit Spy novel.  It was somewhat sensationalized and hard to believe at times.  A fourteen year old with more spy skills than any over-the-top spy movie I've ever seen, and I like spy movies.

The book takes place on an island off Cuba called Skeleton Key.  Halfway through that book I decided to look up the island and found out that the island it is completely fictional.  There was so little content about Cuba that I feel like it shouldn't even be described as "set in Cuba".  It was a nice, light read, nothing special.

My Ratings:

Well written:  Yes

Easy to follow:  Yes

Held my attention:  Yes

Would I recommend this to a friend:  No
Did it represent the country: No

Content:

Explicit Language:  No

Sexual Content: No

Genre: Young Adult, Adventure

Pages: 327

Afghanistan

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

“It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime." 

Amir is the son of a wealthy Kabul merchant, a member of the ruling caste of Pashtuns. Hassan, his servant and constant companion, is a Hazara, a despised and impoverished caste. Their uncommon bond is torn by Amir's choice to abandon his friend amidst the increasing ethnic, religious, and political tensions of the dying years of the Afghan monarchy, wrenching them far apart. But so strong is the bond between the two boys that Amir journeys back to a distant world, to try to right past wrongs against the only true friend he ever had.

The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father’s servant, The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country that is in the process of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption; and an exploration of the power of fathers over sons—their love, their sacrifices, their lies.

A sweeping story of family, love, and friendship told against the devastating backdrop of the history of Afghanistan over the last thirty years, The Kite Runner is an unusual and powerful novel that has become a beloved, one-of-a-kind classic.

My thoughts:

The Kite Runner is one of the best books that I have read in a long time.  Also, one of the heaviest.  The author claims that this book is purely fiction, but having read a lot of fiction and non-fiction I can't help but think that there has to be some truth to this story.  It is different from anything that I have read before, like most non-fiction, you can't completely make this stuff up.  The emotions are too real and hard to get through in many parts.  

I finished this book just before Independence Day and watched the movie with my husband.  I would stop the movie and give more details into the story as we watched.   We went to a neighborhood breakfast on Independence Day and a Veteran took some time to talk to us about his experiences in Afghanistan.  He mentioned some of the tribes that are described in this book and he gave some history.  His stories were so much more powerful after having read The Kite Runner and being able to know even a little bit more of what he was describing to us.

I felt completely immersed in this story while reading it.  Knowing almost nothing about this region of the world, other than the conflict that we hear so much about, it was fascinating to read a book that describes the area, culture, and ethnic traditions so well.  I learned so much.  This is the book that inspired me to read a book from every country in hopes to have a similar experience from each one.

My Ratings:

Well written:  Yes

Easy to follow:  Yes

Held my attention:  Yes

Would I recommend this to a friend:  Yes
Did it represent the country: Yes

Content:

Explicit Language:  Yes, all common explicit words

Sexual Content: Descriptive Rape of a child by another child

Violence: Beatings and executions, mentions of adult raping of a child

For mature readers.  I had days that I was not in a good frame of mind to read the dark heaviness of this book.  I had to take breaks from it from time to time. 

Genre: Historical Fiction

Pages: 391