Amuse Bouche

…there was famine everywhere. In 1958, during the Great Leap Forward, the true face of our revolution was revealed. Why did our leaders dream that every farmer could be reborn as a steelmaker? How did they imagine that a boy who had studied the fields all his life could make iron ore out of nothing? …… Here in this village, the communal kitchen was shut down for lack of food. The ground and the trees were stripped bare. Nobody had a pot to cook their soup in, let alone soup itself. In six months, half the people starved, first the children and the old, then the rest.

from Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien (2016). Very Highly Recommended.