A review by ameliasbooks
Die Kronzeugin: Eine Staatsbeamtin über ihre Flucht aus der Hölle der Lager und Chinas Griff nach der Weltherrschaft by Alexandra Cavelius, Sayragul Sauytbay

challenging informative sad medium-paced

3.75

When I first started this book, I struggled a lot with the writing. I was wondering why the publisher didn't do a better editing job to make this a more polished reading experience. I am a big fan of narrative nonfiction, so I am more used to that kind of style. But who am I to be snobbish about a book, that is nothing else than the proof for a deeply hurtful experience in own words? Sauytbay is not a professional writer and the decision to let the writing for in her own voice, makes total sense to me now. What she is describing, is beyond terrible and I had heard about a few things, which she is describing in this book before, but was obviously quite ignorant about the dimension of what China is actually doing to the Uigurs and the Kazakh people (and some other nations, but this is not what this book is about). And China does this in a much more clever way than e.g. Russia, they just keep everybody's mouth shot with money and valuable trade relations.