Condemned to repeat history
The most horrifying non-fiction book I’ve ever read is “Hungry Ghosts: Mao’s Secret Famine” about how tens of millions of Chinese starved to death due to the ineptitude and indifference of Mao Tse-Tung. Now British journalist Jasper Becker is turning his attention to the modern-day dystopia of North Korea where supreme dictator Kim Jong Il builds palaces and golf courses for himself while the rest of the country suffers.
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The rumors of revolt in NK industrial towns reminds me of the Novocherkassk revolt, related in Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Arhipelago, the third volume. In the early Sixties anti-Khrushchev demonstrations broke out. The Sovs put them down, locked up the instigators, and sent the families into internal exile.
Hungry Ghosts is a book I meant to read when it came out, but never made time for. I'd since forgotten about it, so thanks for the reminder. In return, did you know that Iris Chang recently committed suicide? She wrote _The Rape of Nanking_, about Japanese depredations in China during the '30s.
-- The Sanity Inspector
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