In 1997 the author escaped from North Korea at the age of seventeen. She went to China. Her mother's first words over the telephone to her lost daughter were 'don't come back'. The reprisals for all of them would have been lethal.
When twelve-year-old Arcady is sent to a children's home after his parents are declared enemies of the state in Soviet Russia, soccer becomes a way to secure extra rations, respect, and protection but it may also be his way out if he can believe in and love another person, and himself.
Kolakowski's ... empathy, humor, and erudition are on full display in [this book], the first collection of his work to be published since his death in 2009.
From the 1930's to the 1970's the Soviet police state underwent many changes. With the end of Stalin's rule, indiscriminate violence and arbitrary arrests became a thing of the past. But its underlying principles remained the same to forestall any threat, even the smallest, to the ruling Communist Party. This book shows what life was like for people in the Soviet police state.
When twelve-year-old Arcady is sent to a children's home after his parents are declared enemies of the state in Soviet Russia, soccer becomes a way to secure extra rations, respect, and protection but it may also be his way out if he can believe in and love another person--and himself.
"It's 1951, and twelve-year-old Pete Collison is a regular kid in Brooklyn, New York, who loves Sam Spade detective books and radio crime dramas. But when an FBI agent shows up at Pete's doorstep, accusing Pete's father of being a Communist, Pete is caught in a real-life mystery. Could there really be Commies in Pete's family?"--Provided by publisher.
Starting in 1972 when she is nine years old, Ling, the daughter of two doctors, struggles to make sense of the communists' Cultural Revolution, which empties stores of food, homes of appliances deemed "bourgeois," and people of laughter.
