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
2 Comments
Khaled Hosseini did an AMA here [you might want to take a look](http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1snjj3/this_is_khaled_hosseini_author_of_the_kite_runner/) 🙂 [Here’s a link to all of our upcoming AMAs](http://www.reddit.com/r/books/wiki/amafullschedule)
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You could look at The Mountains Sing by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai – the war in Vietnam. I enjoyed it a lot