3096 DAYS

Dear blog,

I am sorry for bad blogging the past weeks, but due to a lot of midterm exams and hand ins there has been a lack of time. Nevertheless I now have had some spare time and have taken the initiative to sit down and read. A couple of months ago we were given the task to pick a book of our interest. I choose the book The other hand, by Chris Cleave. To be honest I didn’t find the book captivating and I therefore never really got to the main plot. In the mean time, the book by Natacha Kampusch was published – a book I found very interesting and was eager to read.  The book is about Natacha Kampusch, a girl who was snatched off the street in Vienna in 1998. The book is an autobiographi and is about the eight years of abuse, humiliation and the spirit to survive.

A very special relationship in the book is between the kidnapper and Natacha. It is a relationship difficult to describe. To start with Natasha describes that he treated her as a little child. Together they played Chinese checker – natacha imagining she was playing with her father. She made mistakes in the game, so the kidnapper wouldn’t leave her alone and she convinced him to read bedtime-stories and kiss her good night- the same way her mother used to do. All this happened in their virtual world, but as Kampusch said “ it didn’t take long before I saw his other face”.  The kidnapper was manipulating her to believe her family didn’t love her, and that he had rescued her.  He told he was an Egyptian god and that she had to refer to him as “maestro” or “my lord”. He constantly threatened her by taking her only possessions away and making her life in the cellar miserable.

An adventure in the book is when she for the very first time was permitted to take a bath outside of the dungeon. It is Natasha’s first time leaving the basement where she was held hidden, and it was at that point she realized that there was no way she could escape the dungeon. She was hidden in a  soundproof and windowless room , behind a think metaldoor.  

My first impression of the book is very good. Natasha tells her story in a breathtaking and unbelievable way. The book is very captivating, and so unthikable. The book shows us the strong girl Natasha Kampusch and her 3096 days in captivity.

You can expect a new blog entry about this book soon!

Love, Susanna

Picture is taken from here