Rice without Rain

Young adult book, whose lead character, Jinda, lives in a farming community in N Thailand. In the 70s, this was an area of deprivation, the villagers in thrall to greedy landlords who took half the rice harvest. With sickness, malnutrition and oppression a fact of life, the locals are - slowly- motivated into action by a group of students who come to experience their life and spread the message of fighting back. But nothing has an easy answer...
Because of the genre, the characters are pretty 2 dimensional - the good and the bad. But still quite informative on the political climate of the time, and the disparity between the well-off South and impoverished north.

I read this novel as our compulsory literature review in matriculation year in 1995,USM. This book brought me during my tenderly young adult as display by the main character in the novel.

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