196 Books: Ecuador

Poso Wells by Gabriela Aleman

Ecuador is in the northwest part of South America:

Here's the summary:

In the squalid settlement of Poso Wells, women have been regularly disappearing, but the authorities have shown little interest. When the leading presidential candidate comes to town, he and his entourage are electrocuted in a macabre accident witnessed by a throng of astonished spectators. The sole survivor—next in line for the presidency—inexplicably disappears from sight.

Gustavo Varas, a principled journalist, picks up the trail, which leads him into a violent, lawless underworld. Bella Altamirano, a fearless local, is on her own crusade to pierce the settlement's code of silence, ignoring repeated death threats. It turns out that the disappearance of the candidate and those of the women are intimately connected, and not just to a local crime wave, but to a multinational magnate's plan to plunder the country's cloud forest preserve.

One issue I'm running into right now is the limits of book availability. I'm pretty much just going for what's on Kindle or Nook, so it doesn't necessarily match up with the books on my list. Sometimes that turns out well, as in this case. 

I definitely grew up pampered, so when I can learn about those less fortunate I feel like it's a good lesson. I know, poor me. Anyway this area is like a super slum, and underneath there are all these tunnels. Somehow living in those tunnels are these 5 blind men who have kidnapped the women and then decide to take over the world or something. To be honest I would have liked information about these guys. How did they end up in the tunnels? How did they go blind? How did they start this five person cult? 

Actually there were a few other things I would have liked to know more from the story. The candidate that gets kidnapped and then roped into the cult--how did they convince him? I would have liked more on what happened after the story line of trying to plunder the countryside.  

But honestly this was an interesting book. I'm glad I had to do a little more research and find something different.  

196 Books: East Timor

The Crossing by Luis Cardoso

This is East Timor:

This is the book summary:
East Timor hit the world’s newspaper headlines in August 1999 after its bloody, brave vote for independence from Indonesia—one of the great expressions of a people’s democratic spirit. Exquisitely crafted and evocative, Luis Cardoso’s personal history of his homeland takes as its central image a crossing—from child to adult, Portuguese to Timorese, tolerance to repression, colonialism to independence.


So...yeah. There's a bit of shit going on right now. I could not focus on this book...basically at all. I've actually written a post about everything a couple of times, but each time I get about halfway in the heaviness of it hits me and I have to stop. 

But because of that I don't have much to say about this one. It didn't engage me enough to take my mind off of everything else. It didn't clearly tell where the story was taking place at each point so I had a hard time visualizing everything. Apparently East Timor was a place of exile. Honestly the most interesting parts were him talking about his dad who was a nurse. I think they ended up in East Timor for his dad to take care of people? It wasn't really clear if the family went for that or were actually exiled. Then somehow he ended up in Portugal, I think, but none of it was clear. 
And that's it. I'm ready to move on to Ecuador. 

196 Books: Dominican Republic

Tentacle by Rita Indiana 

This is the Dominican Republic. Again, not the same as Dominica. 

Here's the summary:
Plucked from her life on the streets of post-apocalyptic Santo Domingo, young maid Acilde Figueroa finds herself at the heart of a voodoo prophecy: only she can travel back in time and save the ocean – and humanity – from disaster. But first she must become the man she always was – with the help of a sacred anemone. Tentacle is an electric novel with a big appetite and a brave vision, plunging headfirst into questions of climate change, technology, Yoruba ritual, queer politics, poverty, sex, colonialism and contemporary art. Bursting with punk energy and lyricism, it’s a restless, addictive trip: The Tempest meets the telenovela.


This one was cool. It took a little bit for me to get into it, but then it got really exciting. With so many of these books I'm just baffled at how these authors weave these stories from their minds. 
There were, I think, 3 different timelines. It confused me for a bit but they all came together towards the end. In each of the timelines, Acilde has a different identity. And one of those identities kind of directs the others. But then the main identity runs into the opportunity to change the future and save the sea. No brainer, right? Maybe. He starts to think: if he takes that chance, will that nullify his existence? And he has a REALLY good life.
So he chooses...I'm not telling! For once, no spoilers. 

The beginning of the book was kind of hard to get into because there was a lot of sex work and rape. And the rape is kind of just glossed over by the characters, which I really didn't like. 

Otherwise this was a good, engaging, relatively quick read. 
And finally I'm onto the Es! I'm off to the library tomorrow to pick up the next one!

196 Books: Dominica

Black and White Sands by Elma Napier

This little guy is Dominica:

And this little guy is the summary:
Elma Napier's remarkable memoir chronicles her love affair with Dominica. It began in 1932 when she turned her back on London's high society to build a home in Calibishie, then a remote village on Dominica's north coast.

There are tales of bohemian house parties, of war and death, smugglers and servants and, above all, of stories inspired by her political life as the only woman in a colonial parliament, her love for the island's turbulent landscapes and her curiosity about the lives and culture of its people.

I will admit, embarrassed, that I did not really know Dominica was a thing. I've heard of the Dominican Republic; if I've heard of Dominica before I probably thought they were the same place. 
It was neat, but also a little sad, to read about the island becoming more modernized. I'm sure what's there today is a far cry from the jungly island she lived in. 

Kind of like The Lion Children that I read for Botswana, I wonder what makes people decide to leave their life and country behind and randomly start somewhere new. Also what amount of money you have to do that. Napier does seem to be more aware of the privilege she has (which makes sense, they were children). Although I started the book with a bit of a laugh as it described a bit from her first book, "...of her early years, evokes what she called the 'casual cruelty of childhood' often confined to a lonely existense with governesses (and 30 indoor servants), and leavened by her love for exploring moors, forest and sea." Let's see. She was born in 1892. So while she was growing up all sad with her life of exploration and servants waiting on her, millions of other kids were working most of the day and being maimed or killed on the job. So, not exactly a rough life. 

Here were some of the other highlights, parts I found interesting just because they show how different the world is today. For instance, the remedies for and attitudes toward sickness: "For the first four years I myself was immune [to malaria], and then attacked no more than every six months, which I looked on as slimming." I mean I guess it's slimming if it doesn't kill you. There was also the passage about a man who was impotent. (Why she's having this conversation with the doctor, I have no idea.) "The doctor told him that it would be possible to give hormone injections but that these would be extremely expensive. 'No matter,' he said. 'Union will pay.' And the doctor told me that it did." I'll spare you my rant on the patriarchy and its never-ending obsession for making sure men can have all the sex while policing women's bodies. 

It was also interesting to know what was happening on the island during WWII. As an American, you kind of think of it as an "over there" sort of thing (even with Hawaii having been attacked). British territories and colonies (or whatever the technical term is) don't really register to you. But after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Dominican boats were sunk by the enemy. They also worried about blacking out windows at night so they wouldn't be bombed. 

Man I love history. Getting one person's account is so interesting and intimate. Also I want to be on an island right now. 

196 Books: Djibouti

In the United States of Africaby Abdourahman A. Waberi

Here's Djibouti. It's small. 

Here's the summary. The font is small.
In a literary reversal as deadly serious as it is wickedly satiric, this novel by the acclaimed French-speaking African writer Abdourahman A. Waberi turns the fortunes of the world upside down. On this reimagined globe a stream of sorry humanity flows from the West, from the slums of America and the squalor of Europe, to escape poverty and desperation in the prosperous United States of Africa. It is in this world that an African doctor on a humanitarian mission to France adopts a child. Now a young artist, this girl, Malaïka, travels to the troubled land of her birth in hope of finding her mother—and perhaps something of her lost self. Her search, at times funny and strange, is also deeply poignant, reminding us at every moment of the turns of fate we call truth.

Based on the description, I was so excited for this book. I loved the idea of flipping the world this way but, for me, it didn't really work. This was only because it was written really poetically, and I'm just really not in for poetry. It goes way over my head with all the imagery and metaphors. Also he talked about sperm a lot for some reason. No thanks. There was a line that I really loved though; "He is wearing a shirt the same color as his chronic cold..." And it's like, what color do you think a chronic cold would be? I mentioned it to Husband and the color he envisioned was completely different than what I had come up with (I thought of like a dingy tan). 

Eventually the main character decides to go find her birth mother, and this part had less imagery and told more of a story. It was a little odd though; I think she found the mom, and it was kind of...okay, I saw her, that's fine now. Bye. No real description of what it made her feel or anything. Then there's something that happens in this possibly seedy underbelly in what I assume is a third world version of Paris, but I have no idea what actually happened. She hires this guy to help her find her mom, and he takes her to some weird building where she sees something that smells of "garlic and mummy".  She's so horrified by whatever this is that she runs out, throws up, and then decides two things: she's going home, and she's going to send this guy to college in Africa.  
What? And then that was it. She's going to go home and get back together with her fashion designer ex boyfriend. 

For me, I wish it had been written more like a novel and less like a poem, because this is such a great concept. Somebody get on it. 

196 Books: Denmark

The Exception by Christian Jungersen

Here's Denmark:

And here's the summary:
Four women – intimate with the psychology of evil – work together for a small nonprofit that disseminates information on genocide. When two of them receive death threats, they immediately believe the messages come from one of their recently profiled war criminals. As the tensions mount among the women, each discovers that none of the others is exactly the person they seem to be. Their obsession with tracking down the killer turns into a witch hunt: one by one, the women dismiss the idea that the threats were sent from the outside and begin to suspect each other, disclosing the jealousies and contempt that have been simmering just beneath the surface.

A tautly woven philosophical drama with all the trimmings of an electrifying murder mystery, The Exception heralds Christian Jungersen as a gifted storyteller and keen observer of the human psyche.

Holy shit guys. This book was awesome. It had me on the edge of my seat, tensed up, racing through every word. There were so many twists, I thought I had figured out who sent the emails like 5 times. He even had a great wrap up at the end which made me question AGAIN who had done it, but I wasn't even mad about it. Normally I hate a questionable ending; this just kind of made me go "huh."

He also threw in a bunch of genocidal information that was very interesting and seemed really well researched, though thoroughly depressing. 

The only issue I had was that one of the characters has rheumatoid arthritis and it was basically her whole identity. It was completely debilitating after like 6 years of being diagnosed (ok fine, could happen, not everyone has the same "journey" as me). Jungersen said there was no treatment for it (technically true I guess) but she took methotrexate and steroids and still had crazy bad flare ups. She even had some sort of surgery at one point? Which maybe is a real thing, I didn't look into it. Ok, that's really my only complaint. 

Jungersen had me so wrapped up in these relationships and lives, with and without the thriller part of it. I finally got back to a book that really enthralled me, and I'm ramping the challenge back up!

196 Books: Czechoslovakia

Love Letter in Cuneiform by Tomas Zmeskal

Here's the Czech Republic. I think. 

Here's Love Letter in Cuneiform:
Set in Czechoslovakia between the 1940s and the 1990s, Tomáš Zmeškal’s stimulating novel focuses on one family’s tragic story of love and the unspoken. Josef meets his wife, Kveta, before the Second World War at a public lecture on Hittite culture. Kveta chooses to marry Josef over their mutual friend Hynek, but when her husband is later arrested and imprisoned for an unnamed crime, Kveta gives herself to Hynek in return for help and advice. The author explores the complexities of what is not spoken, what cannot be said, the repercussions of silence after an ordeal, the absurdity of forgotten pain, and what it is to be an outsider.
 
In Zmeškal’s tale, told not chronologically but rather as a mosaic of events, time progresses unevenly and unpredictably, as does one’s understanding. The saga belongs to a particular family, but it also exposes the larger, ongoing struggle of postcommunist Eastern Europe to come to terms with suffering when catharsis is denied. Reporting from a fresh, multicultural perspective, Zmeškal makes a welcome contribution to European literature in the twenty-first century.

Is it Czechoslovakia? Czech Republic? Czechia? Pick a name, guys! 
I could give lots of different excuses for my late entry this time, but I won't. I'm wondering when I'll come across another book that I can't wait to read each day. I haven't really disliked them, but I haven't been overly captivated either. 
As I've just come to expect with male authors, here's the obligatory sexist remark: "At first I attributed it to her women's problems, which surely God, in his omnipotence, had inflicted on them as punishment for the suffering they caused men..." Cue eye roll. 

There wasn't much else to really take note of. The story may not always be the same, but it's the countless one of people being horrible during times of war and taking advantage of those they have authority over. I think I might need to find a few books that are a bit less depressing to get my hope back. 

So that's the end of the C countries. This is a short one but I'm very tired and have to get up early, and my brain wants to be done.