Slave tells a life story that I would encourage everyone read about.

Slave was difficult to read in some parts. It was difficult knowing t hat the events happened to someone real, and happened recently.

The book draws you into Nazer's story and you almost instantly want to know more about her and the outcome of the ordeals she faced.

It is difficult knowing that this is a modern tale. We often like to pretend that slavery only took place in the past. However here is one story (among many untold stories) that reminds us that it is not only a problem in the past.

Read this book. ( )

Slavery is, unfortunately, alive and well in today's world. Arab mujahedin conduct regular raids the Nuba mountains of Sudan, and Mende Nazer was about 12 years old when she was captured in one such raid, in 1994. To the shouts of "Allahu Ahkhbar! Allahu Ahkhbar!" ("God is great!") Arab raiders swept through her pastoral and peaceful village, burning, raping, and slaughtering as they sought to capture as many village children as they could.

These children, often raped by their captors, are taken to larger towns and cities and sold as abeed, the Arabic word for slaves. Mende Nazer's story is the account of one abda's (slave) life in captivity.

Mende was a slave for two well-off Arab families; both Muslims, as she is. She points out the irony that both her captors and her "masters" considered themselves devout Muslims at the same time that they beat her, treated her worse than a dog or a cat, and constantly told her she was nothing but a stinking black savage.

Her book paints a picture of a culture that seems based on racial discrimination and hatred -- a culture that does not even give lip service to the notion of equality and fairness. Her very humanity was denied by her mistresses -- her childhood subsumed in an endless round of drudgery. She ate her masters' leftover food, and had to scrape their leftovers into her own special dishes, as she was not allowed to drink or eat from the family's kitchenware -- lest her dirty blackness rub off on it.

Her story, unfortunately, is not unique. What makes Mende's story stand out is that eventually she got up the courage to ask for help, and was fortunate enough to find people willing to help her escape slavery and find asylum in England.

What made this story stand out for me was Mende's account of the several times she passed up opportunities to escape her captivity -- not just because of fear, but because by then she had internalized and accepted her unworthiness to be free. Her account of how she came to believe that it was her destiny to be a slave, of how she came to accept her masters' valuation of her, was not only shocking, but revelatory. From the story of the Israelite slave generation in the Old Testament, who were deliberately condemned to die in the desert because they would always be slaves in their hearts, to the young Mormon girl who was kidnapped by a fanatic couple in Utah a few years ago and seemed to cooperate in her captivity -- the devastating and dehumanizing effects of slavery span eras and cultures.

This is a must-read book for those who naively think that all cultures share a basic belief in fairness, equity, and compassion towards others. ( )