Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

This is an amazing memoir detailing the life of a woman that undoubtedly shares parallels with the lives of many women who suffer in silence. Ali has lived in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya. She finally escape to the Netherlands running from an arranged marriage when she was 22. Since the publication of this book and the creation of a movie detailing the plight of Muslim women, Ali has gone into hiding after receiving numerous death threats.

Beginning with her first memories as a child living in Somalia, we are plunged into the reality of growing up in a war-torn society. Taunted by other children for her kintir (clitoris), at the will of her grandmother, Ali received full female genital cutting at the age of five, without anaesthetic. Her grandmother asked her to be brave while she fell into an unconcious state, while her four-year-old sister's howls and struggles caused her to have lifelong scars on her thighs. Her brother also received genital cutting with tears running down his face. After this procedure, the same man came back to inspect them and remove the thread - leaving a thin bumpy scar between her legs. What Ali gives us is the extremely painful reality of a still common practice in many parts of Africa and the Middle East. A young girl is operated on in this manner to preserve her virginity and to remove parts of her considered to be impure. As a result, sexual pleasure later in life is near impossible and the side effects stretch through eternity.

Details like this continue throughout the book with Ali undergoing a vicious beating at the hands of her mother and her Q'uran teacher. This stopped the regular beatings from her mother, but only for a short time. Scenes like this play out in Ali's life. In her teenage years, she became a fairly devout Muslim and started questioning her beliefs about the status of women. When she asked questions about this, which made her unpopular. This all contributes to the bravest moments of Ali's life - where she was finally able to leave her past behind and bravely embark into a life as a refugee in the Netherlands.

There were some parts of this book which surprised me. In the latter half of the book Ali became a politician in the Dutch parliament. Although Ali clearly knows the difficulties of moving from devout Muslim society to a developed country, she seemed to adopt some fairly harsh anti-immigration and anti-welfare attitudes, seeing that if a refugee moved to the Netherlands they should be able to start work immediately - just as she had. While in her experience, this worked, many women in this position would not, I imagine, be able to recreate their lives as adeptly as she did. An obvious example of this would be her sister who moved soon after her and suffered in her new environment. As well as this I am not as anti-Muslim as she became towards the end of this book, in my view obviously there are practices which need to be changed in many parts of the world, but not all practicers of Muslim culture make use of the same extremes she grew up with.

Despite this personal political difference with Ali, I think this is an absolutely astounding book. Ali is a brilliant writer who portrays her life with emotion and bravery. I think this is a gutsy and wonderfully written book.

Sarum: The novel of England by Edward Rutherford

Sarum is the site of the first settlement in England. This novel uses this first area of settlement and its surrounding areas - Salisbury and Stonehenge - as a setting for a history of England. This starts in the Ice Age and goes all the way through to almost the present day. We follow through generations of cave men, High Priests, Roman invasion, Norse invasion and the building of the cathedral that houses the infamous Salisbury spire. Apparently this was Edward Rutherford's first book - his passion for history and the work that has gone into its making is obvious.

It deals well with many aspects of history that are not well-known to many including the Pagan-esque rituals that took place prior to Roman invasion and a detailed account of the suffering of many during the 1300s Black Death. Many interesting characters burst forth through these pages and especially strong female characters (which I am always a fan of). The battle between the Anglican Protestant church and the ingrained Catholic one is also an interesting one that Rutherford expounds with a great wealth of knowledge on the subject. It is interesting to contrast how this religious battle played out in England compared with Ireland and this I was easily able to do having just read two other books detailing Rutherford's history of Ireland.

The only possible complaint I have with this book is that it is extremely long. Like much of history there are points I find particularly interesting and points that I would rather were not covered in much detail. That said, it would be impossible for the author to cater to all interests in this context and the maps and family trees in the preface of the book contain a lot of useful detail. For what it's worth I would definitely recommend this book.

Pathologies of power: Health, human rights and the new war on the poor by Paul Farmer

Paul Farmer is a doctor of medicine. He has worked all over the world with the dispossessed, the sick, the dying and most of all with the poor. Farmer is among the few medical professionals who as well as giving his time to those who are less fortunate than us has set about to attack the institution that keep these "pathologies of power" in place. What Farmer gives us with this book is anecdotes of patients of his from all over the world as well as statistics that put the public health system in these countries to shame, and put the rest of us to shame as well for allowing this to go on.

Throughout this book, Farmer exposes the very institutions that benefit most from a health system that fails literally millions of people. He expresses frustration where an easily solvable problem in medical terms is unable to be solved because the appropriate drugs simply aren't available. Diseases such as tuberculosis, which are curable in the vast majority of cases with relatively inexpensive drugs. It is largely because these drugs are not available that medical professionals have seen a huge increase in the amount of cases of multi-drug-resistant TB. These are especially telling in prison populations, where often a prison sentence can also become a life sentence.

Furthermore, Farmer expands on this to confront why medical ethics courses largely stick to the plight of those with the fortune to be able to access the right drugs or even to be able to sign their rights away. He sees public health as essentially lacking even among organisation such as the World Health Organisation. More than anything this book stands as a call to action for those of us who find it easier to turn a blind eye. It is both personal with a large amount of anecdotes and statistically sound in its reproduction of the plight of people all over the world.

Ireland Awakening by Edward Rutherford

This book following on from Dublin by the same author, beginning in 1597 and going right through until the twentieth century. Much like the last book, this one is centred in Dublin but also includes other parts of Ireland. It is in this sector of Irish history that we see the devastation wrought by Oliver Cromwell in the 1600s in his attempt to convert the Irish to Protestantism. Following on from this, the difficulties in attempting to build a representative parliament and the block-outs of those who followed Catholicism. Moreover, and perhaps more famously the potato famine of the 1800s started by a blight and later leading to mass starvation. Perhaps surprisingly this famine ended not when health was restored, but when England decided it had had enough and told everyone the famine had ended when it had not.

More so than the last book, I found many of the characters in this book entertaining and interesting. Fortunatus, for example of the Walsh family, who was brought up a Protestant unlike the rest of his family and who trains as a doctor rising up to become gentry. Georgiana was also surprising as a strong female character, who eventually is estranged from her son when he forsakes his family. There are several more strong characters which keep the book moving along well.

I think the sequel was definitely an improvement on the first book. It was fairly consistent throughout as none of the periods of history it covered were uncertain ones from a historical perspective. It also links into the context of wider Ireland as well as Dublin which helps move the story along.

Again I would recommend this, but make sure to read Dublin first. Chock full of historical facts and interesting asides, these are both decent books

Dublin by Edward Rutherford

This is the first in a series of books lent to me by a friend. The subject matter of all these books is a place, rather than a person. Many people come and go throughout centuries and although some of the characters are fairly well-developed, it is the place you get to know, rather than any character in particular.

It is obvious a large amount of research went into this book, which details the history of Dublin up until 1550. In this vein, it is largely inconsistent. Obviously, there are large amounts of research on certain periods of history, while others remain uncertain. Because of this, the beginning of this book in hunter-gatherer periods drifts a fair bit, as there is very little Rutherford can be sure actually happened. For this reason, he uses a lot of fairly descriptive language, which is scant in other parts of the book.

In all respects, this book and all those that follow it is chock-full of interesting historical information and Rutherford provides interesting commentary as to the sureness of this information in history books. Moreover, knowing the setting of these happenings well, as you get to throughout the book, assists the reader in understanding and placing events within context. As someone with an interest in Ireland generally, it made for an incredibly interesting read.

It's difficult to put a rating on this book. A lot of things about it could be improved. That said, it is an amazing book in that it contains such a large amount of information in a fairly interesting and acceptable manner. If you have any sort of interest in history or Ireland, it is an incredible book.

Dead Man Walking: An eyewitness account of the death penalty by Sister Helen Prejean

This book is a phenomenal look at the problems of capital punishment in the USA. It is written by a nun and centres around visits she had with two prisoners, both on death row. The basis of Prejean's argument is that capital punishment is extremely harsh and that such a punishment should not be inflicted at all if it cannot be inflicted fairly, which obviously it hasn't been.

Prejean met Pat Sonnier when he was on death row for brutally killing two teenagers. She first began writing to him as she felt that she needed to be doing more for impoverished people as a nun and as a Christian. We hear chilling accounts of the death penalty and its trials and tribulations over the last century. Prisoners who required five currents of electricity to die over a period of over quarter of an hour; incidents of prisoners catching fire in the process; and one failed attempt for a prisoner to be killed by the jolts. We learn that not only is the electric chair an instrument that does not always do its job properly, but that its infliction is often intensely painful.

As Prejean continues her story of visiting Sonnier and sitting through his many appeals up until his death, she continues relating the inconsistencies of the death penalty including differential sentencing procedures based on race, wealth and a multitude of other variables. She also includes statistics from other countries who use the death penalty, which show a high number of juvenile executions (i.e. infliction of the death penalty on someone under 18 years of age) and the death penalty disproportionately being handed to those who society find it most easy to tread on: the powerless. Despite the US Supreme Court's finding that the death penalty was unlawful, many states have overruled this and continue to use it. Although this book is now fairly dated, the statistics remain similar. Amnesty International's website shows that in the USA, the race of the victim is the most reliable predictor of whether or not the death penalty will be received. More recently, an astonishing 1/3 of inmates would have received a life sentence rather than the death penalty if their victim had been white. Furthermore, it is estimated that 5-10% of people on death row have serious mental illness, despite international laws which prohibit the exercise of the death penalty on these people.

Prejean gives us an astonishing look at how much all these variables come into play as she meets a second death row inmate, Robert Willie. She faces more adversity this time and has trouble even entering the prison, despite a guarantee to an inmate of a spiritual adviser if he/she chooses. It is at this point in the book where Prejean also begins to take the families of the victims more into account, after the families of Sonnier's victims expressed upset at being ignored. This leads Prejean to join a victims' rights group and it is here that the political message she is trying to get across becomes clear.

This is a brilliantly written book. It gives an astonishing account of life on death row and provides statistics and information on the practice of capital punishment in the USA. I would recommend it to all.

Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz

Every year thousands of people around the world apply for entrance to universities of their choice. I'm lucky in that I live in a country with fairly open admission. Going off my school marks I wouldn't have got into a very good university in the USA, yet I have done much better at university than I ever did at school.

This book is a fictional one about a woman called Portia who is an admissions officer for Princeton. That means that for a whole region she makes the decisions about who will enter the hallowed halls of one of the United States' 'Ivy League' universities. Princeton looks for not just the best but people who are the best and have that little something extra. Portia's job is to make initial decisions about students before they go to a board who decides each student's future once and for all. Throughout the book, Portia reads applications, students' essays and recommendations from their teachers and counsellors. Having worked as an outside reader for university applications before, Korelitz shows what the world of a gatekeeper to a sought after university is like.

Through her job, Portia visits a small school that has never been visited by Princeton before. Here she meets a boy she considers to be extremely talented and as the book continues we learn that there is something extremely personal in Portia's connection to this boy. Throughout her 16-year long relationship also hits complications and without many friends or family connections she hits her work in a way she never has to before in order to hide from the truth.

This book has an absolutely amazing storyline and is also an interesting look into the process of North American university applications and how spur of the moment each decision which potentially could change a student's life can be. Despite this, there are in my view several problems which prevent this book from reaching its full potential. Portia's character is not very well developed and the things that cause her very own "admission" to take place are unbelievable. Furthermore, the book reaches a conclusion that the reader has been expecting throughout the book and the last few chapters in this way feel a bit pointless.

Despite its flaws, this book is an impressive one and I woul be interested to read more of Korelitz's work in the future.