00:00Three books that talk about human wickedness and do it really well.
00:03Nightmares of Beirut by Gadda Samman.
00:05What is most powerful about this book is that the writing, which is wonderful and extremely poetic,
00:10It is in stark contrast to the atrocities of war.
00:13The story tells of a woman, a journalist, who remains stranded in Beirut
00:17amidst explosions during the Lebanese civil war.
00:21From here begin these nightmares, which are real situations,
00:24but which gradually become more and more hallucinatory,
00:27to the point of seeming almost surreal.
00:29The book makes us understand that the evil here is not only in the soldiers or in the war,
00:34but it is precisely within the human being himself that he becomes capable of getting used to horror.
00:40Cucum by Michel Jean.
00:41Here the evil is perhaps a little quieter, but it is still very devastating.
00:46The story is about a woman who falls in love with an Innu boy,
00:49or of the indigenous population of Canada,
00:52and through his life we see the slow destruction of an entire people.
00:57The violence is that of colonialism, that of institutions and of a society
01:02that erases identity and culture.
01:04It's a story that provokes strong emotions, definitely a lot of anger,
01:08deep sadness, a great sense of injustice,
01:11but also a very strong empathy.
01:12Finally one of the books that has most influenced me,
01:16and it's 12 Years a Slave, by Solomon Northup.
01:18This book talks about one of the darkest moments in human existence.
01:21A black man is kidnapped and will spend 12 years of his life
01:24amidst humiliation, violence and torture on American plantations.
01:29Here the evil is brutal, unfiltered and decidedly explicit.
01:33There is so much physical and psychological violence and a total denial of humanity.
01:38The power of this book is that it teaches us that the most important thing
01:41It's not about surviving, but about remaining human when everyone else stops being human.
01:47I hope I have piqued your curiosity with these books because in my opinion they are very important,
01:52They really deserve a lot for how they are written and for what they talk about,
01:56which is definitely one of my favorite topics.
01:59So if you have read them or plan to,
02:02maybe let me know in the comments.
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