China - The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices

Book 34: The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices - Xinran

In the late 1980s, Xinran hosted the first call-in show on state run radio. Her program, called "Words on the Night Breeze," focused on the lives of Chinese women - a topic rarely spoken of publicly before. The program was hugely popular, and Xinran received thousands of letters and hours of answering machine messages from women across China. This book contains the stories of some of those women. The stories are heartbreaking. These women tell their stories - arranged marriages, lovers lost to "the Party," children lost to war and natural disaster, and of their fight to carry on. Xinran left China in the late 1990s so that she could tell their stories to the world. Very much worth the read. 

Chile - The House of the Spirits

Book 33: The House of the Spirits - Isabel Allende

"In one of the most important and beloved Latin American works of the 20th century, Isabel Allende weaves a luminous tapestry of three generations of the Trueba family, revealing both triumphs and tragedies. 

Here is patriarch Esteban, whose wild desires and political machinations are tempered only by his love for his ethereal wife, Clara, a woman touched by an otherworldly hand. Their daughter, Blanca, whose forbidden love for a man Esteban has deemed unworthy infuriates her father, yet will produce his greatest joy: his granddaughter Alba, a beautiful, ambitious girl who will lead the family and their country into a revolutionary future." 

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This book fits under many genres - fiction, magical realism, fantasy, classics, historical fiction...I grabbed onto the last one, particularly in the second half of the book. While the story itself is fiction, it's set against a very real backdrop. And I found myself pausing to Google the history of Chile so that I could understand the storyline more completely. The real characters are not named, nor is a definitive date given. But the book starts around WWII, which makes "the President" Eduardo Montalva, "the Socialist" is Salvador Allende, and "the General" is Augusto Pinoche. Salvador Allende, by the way, is Isabel's father's first cousin, which lends a whole new light to the story. 

The story is beautiful, violent, triumphant and tragic. I loved it.