THE NATASHAS: Inside the New Global Sex Trade

Award-winning Canadian journalist Malarek reports on the most recent wave in the global sex trade, sparked by the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. According to the U.S. State Department, at least 800,000–900,000 impoverished young women, many of them orphans, from Eastern and Central Europe, are lured with promises of jobs as waitresses, nannies or maids in Western Europe or North America. Instead, they find themselves imprisoned in apartments, massage parlors or brothels in countries ranging from South Korea, Bosnia and Japan to Israel and Germany. With "ruthless efficiency," in the words of one European official, Russian and other organized crime syndicates control this human trade, which offers high profits with little risk of interference thanks to "complacency, complicity, and corruption" on the part of national governments and law enforcement. One of the more horrific examples Malarek offers involves sex slaves in Bosnia who serviced NATO and UN peacekeepers after the war in 1995. Malarek recounts the affecting first-person stories of numerous victims. The author has excellent research skills and clearly makes his case with the hope of creating enough outrage to stop this traffic in women. However, his hyperbolic, tabloid style of writing is distracting. The facts are horrendous enough to speak for themselves. Agent, Bruce Westwood. 20,000 first printing. (Sept.)