The subject of this book was horrific but the writing was something truly beautiful. Often times when I am faced with a journalist turned author I'm left feeling hungry, as if the journalist can't fill up all the pages of their book. Asne does not have this problem. In 1994 Asne traveled to Chechnya as an independent war journalist. While there she was almost raped and shot at more than once. Ten years later she returns to Chechnya to try and discover what has happened to the area since the war. What she documents is heartbreaking. She describes a young boy who slowely kills dogs who he finds eating unburied bodies. She documents the struggles of a woman trying to run an orphanage whose husband has fled the country with many of the older boys to keep them out of the army or from being rounded up as Islamic terrorist. She writes of neighbors who no longer speak because of fear of being labeled as "one of them". This story is not for the faint of heart but if you can stomach the content it is a treasure.
Out of Five Stars I give it Five Stars *****
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