“The starvation of a human body, once it begins, always follows the same course,” Anne Applebaum explains in this harrowing and brilliant book.
In the first phase, the body consumes its stores of glucose… In the second phase, which can last for several weeks, the body begins to consume its own fats and the organism weakens drastically. In the third phase, the body devours its own proteins, cannibalising tissues and muscles. Eventually the skin becomes thin, the eyes become distended, the legs and belly swollen…
The matter-of-fact style Applebaum uses to describe the ghastliest horrors never dulls her compassion or the subtlety of her historical understanding of eastern Europe.
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