Books about how political changes in little known countries affect normal (fictional) people

I have recently quite accidentally read two fiction novels that taught me a lot about the history of the countries they were set it.

‘Free’ by Lea Ypi – a coming-of-age story of a child growing up in Albania going through systemic changes and the perhaps better known ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ by Khaled Hosseini, a tragic tale about being a woman in Afghanistan between the 70’s and 2000’s.

I’m looking for more of that – with, aside from a literary experience, the specific side-goal of learning something about some parts of the world that I know little about. I want to read about relatively recent political changes (last 50 years) through the eyes of normal people and I’m specifically interested in some ‘non-mainstream’ parts of the world, like e.g. the Balkans, Central America, ex-Soviet republics. Can anyone recommend anything like that?

by gorne14