Political abduction Books

Book SynopsisUgur Ümit Üngör is Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies, Holland. He has won several academic awards and held visiting positions in Dublin, Vancouver, Budapest, Toronto, and Los Angeles. His most recent publication is Paramilitarism: Mass Violence in the Shadow of the State (2020).Jaber Baker is a documentary filmmaker, novelist and human rights activist. Between 2002 and 2004 he was held in a military prison in Syria. He has 16 years' experience of research and specialises in the Syrian prison system.Trade ReviewIn Syrian Gulag, Jaber Baker and Ugur Ümit Üngör present the first detailed overview of the prison system. They have carried out more than 100 interviews with surviving detainees, as well as former prisoner workers and many other eyewitnesses. They have also drawn upon a huge amount of archival material. The results are profoundly shocking. In more than 30 years of book reviewing, this is the most horrifying volume I have read. -- Peter Carty * The Spectator *Syrian Gulag … is the most comprehensive and systematic single-volume book on Syria’s imprisonment system of terror. -- Usman Butt * The New Arab *This book is an extraordinary achievement. Drawing on extensive primary source material, Baker and Üngör reveal in an unprecedented level of detail the sheer magnitude of Syria’s massive internal security agencies, the bureaucratization of torture on an industrial scale, and the extent to which fear is a constant presence in the lives of ordinary Syrians. The book is unsparing in its accounts of survivors of torture and techniques of torture, and all the more powerful for including them. It makes an unimpeachable case for brutality and violence as defining attributes of the Assad regime. It is also a sobering rebuttal to those seeking the regime’s “normalization.” It should be required reading for all who have an interest in Syria, human rights, and states as perpetrators of mass violence. * Steven Heydemann, Professor, Smith College, USA *This study is the first in any language to begin to map the Syrian prison archipelago. It is an urgently necessary and timely insight into the workings of Syria's Assad regime. * Anne-Marie McManus, Principle Investigator at the ERC Project SYRASP, Germany *As some European states have started forcing refugees back to Syria, this book is a grim reminder that for its unfortunate citizens, the violence preceded the use of rockets and barrel bombs, and the threat to their life remains undiminished. What makes this book invaluable is its panoramic picture of Syria’s vast repressive apparatus that the uprising failed to dislodge. What makes this book frightening is that unlike Dante, who had to use his prodigious imagination to describe hell, the hell described herein comes from the direct experience of survivors who lived through its various circles of torment. In painstaking detail, Jaber Baker and Ugur Ümit Üngör have mapped the hellish institutions, sites, and methods through which the Syrian regime has preserved its rule by extinguishing hope and humanity. And through meticulous documentation they’ve also created an instrument through which the perpetrators may one day be held to account. * Dr. Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, Director of Journalism, University of Essex, UK *Syria's dungeons have long kept its secrets; places so foreboding and cruel that few dared mention what happens inside them. The war has changed that. Once taboo topics are now being discussed far from the broken country, where former prisoners now in exile are detailing a killing and torture machine that rivals the Khmer Rouge for the scale of its savagery. In Syrian Gulag, Üngör and Baker open the gates of one of modern history's most infamous prison systems and empower a brutalised people to tell their stories. * Martin Chulov, Middle East Correspondent, The Guardian *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Mezze: Political Elites and Incarceration 2. Intelligence Bureaus 3. Tadmur 4. The First Military Prison: Saydnaya 5. Civil Prisons for Justice and Reconciliation 6. Conclusion Appendix 1 Some Main characters Appendix 2 Tortures and their tools Appendix 3 Kitchen and Eating Utensils Appendix 4 Diseases Appendix 5 Medicines Appendix 6 Prison Jargon Bibliography Notes

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Book SynopsisWINNER OF ENGLISH PEN AWARD 2023 LONG-LISTED FOR THE REPUBLIC OF CONSCIOUSNESS PRIZE 2024 ‘How did these stories get into your hands? They flew, as if painted by Marc Chagall, through prison walls, borders, and languages.’ - Valzhyna Mort ‘It’s a terse account of painful experience, prison, bewilderment; hugely atmospheric and extremely funny – full of dry wit and small biting observations.’ - Anna Vaught 100 stories written from prison in Belarus with 'echoes of early Chekhov, Zoshchenko and Samuel Beckett' (Michael Purs). Despite its bleak context, this is a fundamentally optimistic book, engaging comically, yet honestly, with what it means to be human. Translated from the Russian by Jim and Ella Dingley. With an introduction by ‘risen star of the international poetry world’ Valzhyna Mort.Trade ReviewMaxim Znak's message is that wry humour and humanity trump the cruel absurdities of the regime [...] These stories, one hundred of them, none longer than three pages, have echoes of early Chekhov, Zoshchenko and Samuel Beckett and, ultimately, of Giovanni Boccaccio and Vernon Kress, who used the punning title for his 1991 novel of the Gulag. - Michael Purs The fact that this book exists at all should be a miracle. Simply because the stories were smuggled out … The true sensation, however, is the mental achievement the prisoner Maxim Znak was capable of: that in his situation, which could really be called hopeless, he still possesses the internal freedom to create literature. - Cornelia Geissler, Berliner Zeitung [Znak] uses the weapons that dictators like Lukashenko detest most: humour, wit, publicity. - Jens Uthoff, taz.die tageszeitung It's a terse account of painful experience, prison, bewilderment; hugely atmospheric and extremely funny – full of dry wit and small biting observations. - Anna Vaught

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Book SynopsisFrom the author of the #1 NYT bestseller I Heard You Paint Houses / The Irishman Featuring the eyewitness testimony of Earlene Roberts and Victor Robertson With this book, “Dallas” is now completely solved, by a professional and rational analysis.Charles Brandt, who handled over fifty-six homicides as the chief deputy attorney general of Delaware, in charge of all homicides and a private homicide defense attorney in the 1970s, has now used his hands-on professional experience in murder investigation and his analytic skills to conclusively solve every secret of the homicides of JFK, Officer Tippit, and Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas in 1963. As well, Brandt proves that “but for” the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Mafia would not have authorized any of these 1963 murders that form the basis of Suppressing the Truth in Dallas. Brandt solves the mysteries of Dallas for all time and exposes all the motives of those, such as Chief Justice Earl Warren, who intentionally attempted to suppress the truth.Trade Review“Fascinating, provocative, iconoclastic, insightful, thoughtful and thought-provoking, Suppressing the Truth in Dallas: Conspiracy, Cover-Up, and International Complications in the JFK Assassination Case is an impressively informative and exceptionally well organized and presented study that is highly recommended for personal, community, and academic library 20th Century American History collections.” -- Midwest Book Review“Suppressing the Truth in Dallas is a well-written book.” -- Dr. Michael Baden, Chief Medical Examiner to the 1976-1979 House Select Committee investigating the assassination of President John F. Kennedy“Brandt is more like an investigative reporter, going more in depth on his newest book on the JFK assassination.” -- Martin Scorsese

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Book SynopsisOn November 22, 1963, the author of Behind the Scenes was a young Dallas Times Herald reporter who sprinted from his newspaper desk to Dealey Plaza minutes after shots were fired at President John F. Kennedy. Thus began Darwin Payne’s close involvement in covering one shocking event after another on this history-making weekend. Eyewitnesses he found at Dealey Plaza included Abraham Zapruder, who insisted from the first moments that the president could not have survived the serious wounds he had seen so clearly through his camera viewfinder. Payne interviewed detectives outside the School Book Depository that early afternoon as they brought down evidence of the shooter’s location, as well as his rifle, and he was among several journalists taken to the assassin’s sixth-floor window from where fatal shots had been fired.Before the day ended, Payne was in the Oak Cliff rooming house where the suspect had been living briefly apart from his Russian wife, Marina. Payne learned that the alleged assassin, now in police custody after being charged with the murder of officer J. D. Tippit, was known as O. H. Lee instead of Lee Harvey Oswald.On Payne’s regular Saturday night police-beat duty, he was among the growing number of assertive journalists from throughout the nation who saw and heard Oswald being led to and from his jail cell to the homicide office for interrogation. As detectives pushed their way with him through the crowd of reporters, he responded to their questions with defiant claims of innocence. The mind-boggling weekend was still not over, for the next morning nightclub owner Jack Ruby shot and killed Oswald.Trade ReviewBehind the Scenes is an outstanding introduction because of its knowledge of Dallas both before and after the assassination; its portrayal of key actors, such as Bruce Alger and Will Fritz; and how it contextualizes November 22." - Max Holland, journalist and author of The Kennedy Assassination Tapes

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Book SynopsisThe intensely moving memoir of Patrick Maguire, one of the ‘Maguire Seven’, wrongly imprisoned as a teenager for making bombs for the IRA.Trade Review'It goes deep into the mind of the abused boy who has become a troubled man.’ Mail on Sunday ‘Patrick Maguire…tells the sometimes unbearably poignant story of his childhood, sudden arrest, three years of prison and what came next.' Daily Mail 'Its power derives from Patrick himself…a damaged survivor with the burdens of a past he cannot shrug off. A devastating chronicle of injustice and blighted lives. It is moving and sad, and told without bitterness. It's not a happy story, but it is a necessary one.' Ronan Bennett, Guardian ‘Painfully honest and utterly compelling.’ Irish Mail on Sunday

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Book SynopsisFrom 1929 to 1958, hundreds of thousands of prisoners and exiles from across the Soviet Union were sent to the harsh yet resource-rich Komi Republic in Russia's Far North. When the Soviet Union collapsed, former prisoners sent their autobiographies to Komi's local branches of the anti-Stalinist Memorial Society and history museums. Using these previously unavailable personal records, alongside newspapers, photographs, interviews, and other non-state archival sources, After the Gulag sheds new light not only on how former prisoners experienced life after release but also how they laid the foundations for the future commemoration of Komi's dark past. Bound by a camp brotherhood, they used informal social networks to provide mutual support amid state and societal oppression. Decades later, they sought rehabilitation with the help of the newly formed Memorial Societythe civic organization largely responsible for the de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union. In sharing their life stories and Trade Review"In After the Gulag, Kirk uncovers the process of remembering that took place in the Komi Republic from the late-1980s up to 2021. He mines an innovative source base, in that he has explicitly (for the most part) rejected state archives and gone to the words of the prisoners. Kirk presents a region that understands its past, finds unity in that past (even the repressive elements), and where individuals can find ways to deal with their traumatic experiences."—Wilson T. Bell, author of Stalin's Gulag at War: Forced Labour, Mass Death, and Soviet Victory in the Second World War"The book takes us to a lost era, when civil society organizations like Memorial existed and served citizens, and when Russians were grappling with the painful chapters of their recent history. The stories are vivid and gripping, and the characters are memorable, sympathetic, and complex."—Golfo Alexopoulos, author of Illness and Inhumanity in Stalin's Gulag

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"In After the Gulag, Kirk uncovers the process of remembering that took place in the Komi Republic from the late-1980s up to 2021. He mines an innovative source base, in that he has explicitly (for the most part) rejected state archives and gone to the words of the prisoners. Kirk presents a region that understands its past, finds unity in that past (even the repressive elements), and where individuals can find ways to deal with their traumatic experiences."—Wilson T. Bell, author of Stalin's Gulag at War: Forced Labour, Mass Death, and Soviet Victory in the Second World War"The book takes us to a lost era, when civil society organizations like Memorial existed and served citizens, and when Russians were grappling with the painful chapters of their recent history. The stories are vivid and gripping, and the characters are memorable, sympathetic, and complex."—Golfo Alexopoulos, author of Illness and Inhumanity in Stalin's Gulag

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Book SynopsisFemale prisoners of conscience and activists speak out against torture in Iranian prisonsTrade Review'The testimonies of 14 women collected in White Torture read like a charge sheet against the Islamic Republic. Fortunately for future prosecutors, this book is full of inquisitors’ names. Should the ayatollahs and their bully boys fall, it will surely form part of the case against them. And, as it did for Mr Khamenei, the torment of Iran’s prisons might yet propel their inmates to power.' Economist'Narges still roars like a lioness. This is why the regime wants to crush her. White Torture is another roar of this lioness.' Shirin Ebadi'Ms Mohammadi’s research from prison, based on interviewing inmates, resulted in a book about the emotional impact of solitary confinement and prison conditions in Iran.' New York Times'The testimonies of these brave women are made more effective for being delivered in Amir Rezanezhad’s calm, understated translation. They reveal an awe-inspiring capacity for resilience and resistance… Their courage is beyond imagination.' Irish Times'The women interviewed in this book narrate their experiences of solitary confinement in the Islamic Republic’s jails, revealing the extent of the regime’s unimaginable brutality and Iranian people’s immense suffering under its rule. But as unspeakably brutal as this regime is, its violence reveals another truth: its helplessness and defeat in the face of women like these, and the courageous resistance of so many Iranians who like these women risk so much, including their lives, but refuse to succumb to the regime. This is where hope lies, in their resilience, in their power to stand up to the totalitarian regime, in their determination to preserve their sense of dignity and individual identity. This is what makes the regime so incompetent and its violence so ineffectual. These women reveal the truth about the Islamic republic and they pay the price for it. Through reading their testimonials we too learn the truth. The question every reader should ask herself is, now that we know the truth, what are we going to do about it?' Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran'White Torture is a must-read for anyone concerned with human rights in Iran. A gripping, moving and utterly shocking account of the horrific abuse suffered by female political prisoners at the hands of the Iranian regime, Narges Mohammadi's interviews with her fellow detainees provide an invaluable window into the capricious and cruel world of Iran's prison system.' Kylie Moore-Gilbert, author of The Uncaged Sky'The personal stories compiled in White Torture offer an insight into the especially grim way Iranian authorities dole out punishment.' New Statesman'Small details shine out, speaking of strength of will and a refusal to be broken…heartrending.’ New Internationalist'White Torture is [Mohammadi’s] most thorough crie de coeur yet, combining as it does her own heart-rending testimony with interviews of 12 other imprisoned women… These testimonies are uniquely powerful, as all the interviews were carried out while the women were in jail, and make the book White Torture an important document in the fight for human rights... compelling reading on many levels, not least when it comes to showing the extraordinary spirit of Iran’s women and their devotion to justice and freedom.' The Markaz Review

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Book Synopsis‘Written with Burleigh’s characteristic brio, with pithy summaries of historical moments (he is brilliant on the Americans in Vietnam, for example) and full of surprising vignettes’ – The Times ’Book of the Week’In Day of the Assassins, acclaimed historian Michael Burleigh examines assassination as a special category of political violence and asks whether, like a contagious disease, it can be catching.Focusing chiefly on the last century and a half, Burleigh takes readers from Europe, Russia, Israel and the United States to the Congo, India, Iran, Laos, Rwanda, South Africa and Vietnam. And, as we travel, we revisit notable assassinations, among them Leon Trotsky, Hendrik Verwoerd, Juvénal Habyarimana, Indira Gandhi, Yitzhak Rabin and Jamal Khashoggi.Combining human drama, questions of political morality and the sheer randomness of events, Day of the Assassins is a riveting insight into the politics of violence.‘Brilliant and timely . . . Our world today is as dangerous and mixed-up as it has ever been. Luckily we have Michael Burleigh to help us make sense of it.’ – Mail on SundayTrade ReviewDay of the Assassins is written with Burleigh’s characteristic brio, with pithy summaries of historical moments (he is brilliant on the Americans in Vietnam, for example) and full of surprising vignettes, which he handles with a commendable sang-froid. -- David Aaronovitch 'Book of the Week' * The Times *A lively account of how political murders, from Julius Caesar onwards, have differed from most others. * Daily Telegraph Top History Books of the Year *Michael Burleigh’s Day of the Assassins reminds us that political murder is as old as mankind . . . The detail, as always in Burleigh’s books, is conveyed with great brio -- Jonathan Powell * New Statesman *One of the great pleasures of reading Burleigh, a man never afraid to speak his mind, is the matter-of-fact way in which he dissects and disposes of sacred cows . . . Burleigh’s analysis of Putin’s Russia, incidentally, is a brilliant and timely reminder of the danger of taking things at face value. Our world today is as dangerous and mixed-up as it has ever been. Luckily we have Michael Burleigh to help us make sense of it. -- Simon Griffith * Mail on Sunday *A thoughtful and eminently readable book. -- Nigel Jones * BBC History Magazine *Burleigh, a historian of Germany and a prolific newspaper commentator, is careful to recognise the whodunnits where mystery is as gripping as any historical methodology -- Peter Stothard * History Today *Relentlessly sanguinary . . . harshly excellent. -- Jonathan Meades * Literary Review *

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Book SynopsisUnited States History award-winner from the International Book Awards, Best Nonfiction True Crime award from BookFest, and Five Stars from Reader's Favorite among other accolades. "Spieler offers a portrait of an erratic, unstable woman with a protean capacity to shift identities, with the 1960s and '70s as a dramatic backdrop. Fans of true crime accounts or contemporary history will savor this.” ―Publishers Weekly President Gerald Ford suffered two attempts on his life during his term in office: one by a young woman in Charles Manson's Family, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, and the other by a far more unlikely candidate—an average middle-aged mother of five—Sara Jane Moore. After thirty years in contact with Moore in prison, journalist Geri Spieler deconstructs her life in Housewife Assassin, tracing the path from Moore’s small-town upbringing in West Virginia to that fateful moment when she tried to assassinate the president. Throughout Moore’s dodgy life she hid her identity and misled those around her. Through the turbulent 60s and 70s, she married five times, abandoned children, faked amnesia, befriended Patty Hearst’s father, became a revolutionary, and worked as an FBI informant turned double agent feeding information to the underground radicals, all before the assassination attempt. From Spieler’s insider correspondence and independent research, including interviews with President Ford himself, she confirms details (the gunshot missed the President’s head by six inches) and debunks others (Sara Jane did not “shoot wild” as the press had reported) to deliver a compelling profile of a society lady turned elusive assassin. Trade Review "Spieler offers a portrait of an erratic, unstable woman with a protean capacity to shift identities, with the 1960s and '70s as a dramatic backdrop. Fans of true crime accounts or contemporary history will savor this.” ―Publishers Weekly “In her investigative exploration, Spieler leverages the unexpected narrative of Sara Jane Moore—an everyday housewife turned attempted presidential assassin—as a startling exposé of systemic issues within the U.S. intelligence network. The remarkable story of Moore, who managed to evade the detection of agencies like the FBI and Secret Service, presents a compelling case study in the perils of interagency miscommunication and inadequate threat evaluation. Spieler challenges us to ponder: how can such glaring oversights occur within our intelligence apparatus, and more importantly, what measures can be implemented to safeguard our nation from similar, potentially more successful threats in the future? . . . Housewife Assassin thus stands as a critical resource for all those invested in the security of our nation—policymakers, law enforcement agencies, and ordinary citizens alike. . . . It's a stirring testament to the urgent need for reform, and a roadmap to achieving a more secure future for our nation.”—USA TODAY "It is the obligation of the thoughtful journalist to tell us something meaningful that we don't already know. In Taking Aim at the President, Geri Spieler is more than up to the task. The byzantine tale of Sara Jane Moore's double, triple and quadruple lives, with so many bizarre groups - including the federal government - exploiting her vulnerabilities, is the stuff of Hollywood fiction. The fact that it's all true, and told with precision by Spieler, raises Sara Jane's story to something significantly more than a footnote to history." ―Alan Weisman, author of Prince of Darkness: Richard Perle, The Kingdom, the Power & the End of Empire in America and Lone Star: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Dan Rather "Geri Spieler has done a marvelous job of unraveling the details surrounding one of the most bizarre events in American history, Sara Jane Moore's attack on Gerald Ford.” ―James Dalessandro, author of 1906 and Citizen Jane "A well-written, fascinating story about an inexplicable moment in American History." ―Carl Stern, Professor of Media and Public Affairs, George Washington University, and former NBC News correspondent "Talk about truth being stranger than fiction! Captivating." ―The San Francisco Chronicle

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Book SynopsisJack Ruby changed history with one bold, violent action: killing accused presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV two days after the November 22, 1963, murder of President John F. Kennedy. But who was Jack Ruby, and how did he come to be in that spot on that day? As we approach the sixtieth anniversaries of the murders of Kennedy and Oswald, Jack Ruby’s motives are as maddeningly ambiguous today as they were the day that he pulled the trigger. The fascinating yet frustrating thing about Ruby is that there is evidence to paint him as at least two different people. Much of his life story points to him as bumbling, vain, violent, and neurotic; a product of the grinding poverty of Chicago’s Jewish ghetto; a man barely able to make a living or sustain a relationship with anyone besides his dogs. By the same token, evidence exists of Jack Ruby as cagey and competent, perhaps not a mastermind, but a useful pawn of the Mob and of both the police and the FBI; someone capable of running numerous legal, illegal, and semi-legal enterprises, including smuggling arms and vehicles to both sides in the Cuban revolution; someone capable of acting as middleman in bribery schemes to have imprisoned Mob figures set free.Cultural historian Danny Fingeroth's research includes a new, in-depth interview with Rabbi Hillel Silverman, the legendary Dallas clergyman who visited Ruby regularly in prison and who was witness to Ruby’s descent into madness. Fingeroth also conducted interviews with Ruby family members and associates. The book’s findings will catapult you into a trip through a house of historical mirrors. At its end, perhaps Jack Ruby’s assault on history will begin to make sense. And perhaps we will understand how Oswald’s assassin led us to the world we live in today.Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Killing the Killer 2. Assassination 3. World’s Apart 4. A World Gone Mad 5. War at Home, War Abroad 6. The Old Frontier 7. The Personal and the Political 8. Converging Forces 9. Life Is a Carousel 10. The New Frontier 11. The Center Cannot Hold 12. Autumn in New York . . . and Dallas 13. Murder Most Foul 14. Frenzy 15. Hero of the People 16. Whom the Gods Would Destroy 17. Dallas Justice 18. Sound and Fury 19. Pyrrhic Victory 20. Going Home 21. Afterlife Index

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Book SynopsisA Uyghur poet's piercing memoir of life under the most coercive surveillance regime in history***LITHUB'S #1 BEST-REVIEWED NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023******A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023******AN ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023***'Essential reading' AI WEIWEI, author of 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows'Deserves to be read widely... Beautiful' FINANCIAL TIMESIf you took an Uber in Washington DC a few years ago, there's a chance your driver was one of the greatest living Uyghur poets, and one of only a handful from his minority Muslim community to escape the genocide being visited upon his homeland in western China.A successful filmmaker, innovative poet and prominent intellectual, Tahir Hamut Izgil had long been acquainted with state surveillance and violence, having spent three years in a labour camp on fabricated charges.But in 2017, the Chinese government's repression of its Uyghur citizens assumed a terrifying new intensity: critics were silenced; conversations became hushed; passports were confiscated; and Uyghurs were forced to provide DNA samples and biometric data.As Izgil's friends disappeared one by one, it became clear that fleeing the country was his family's only hope.Escape to America spared Izgil's family the internment camps that have swallowed over a million Uyghurs. It also allowed this rare personal testimony of the Xinjiang genocide to reach the wider world.Waiting to Be Arrested at Night charts the ongoing destruction of a community and a way of life. It is a call for the world to awaken to a humanitarian catastrophe, an unforgettable story of courage, escape and survival, and a moving tribute to Izgil's friends and fellow Uyghurs whose voices have been silenced.Trade ReviewAn urgent tale of survival and subversion * Economist, *Books of the Year* *Deserves to be read and listened to widely... This is a beautiful read. Izgil’s poetic gaze, and the elegant translation by Joshua L Freeman, together produce a compact, compelling prose that pushes you to keep reading on, even as you blink back tears * Financial Times *So much more than a thrilling account of a great escape. It is nothing less than a call to the West not to look away from one of the most terrible genocides of our times * Sunday Times *Izgil's memoir is a story about how to survive in, and to negotiate one's way through, a society in which repression has become routine, and the power of the state is unfettered. The book's restraint is also its strength * Guardian *I… devoured it in one night. It is a stunning work with its lyrical prose and elegiac translation, a page-turner that stands alongside any thriller for the skill with which it builds tension as a noose tightens round an entire community… Tahir reveals again the banality of evil * i *In the elegant, elliptical poems that appear throughout the text – translated, like the rest of the memoir, with great skill and subtlety by Joshua L. Freeman – Tahir both acknowledges and transforms the worsening political situation. Perhaps one of the most remarkable aspects of the book is its refreshing lack of political rhetoric: there are no pronouncements on the great evil of the Chinese state. Tahir lets the awful facts speak for themselves * Times Literary Supplement *A heart-wrenching but beautifully written memoir * Daily Telegraph *More than just a memoir... It is also the story of the Uyghur people and the political, social, and cultural destruction of their homeland by the Chinese state * TIME *To call this merely 'a good book' is an understatement - it is essential reading -- Ai Weiwei, author of 1000 Years of Joys and SorrowsAn outlier among books about human rights. This is in effect a psychological thriller, although the narrative unfolds like a classic horror movie as relative normalcy dissolves into a nightmare -- Barbara Demick, author of Nothing to EnvyA vital and urgent book about the tragedy of the Uyghur people, abandoned by the world and brutally oppressed by the Chinese government. The voice of Tahir Hamut Izgil is one that must be heard -- Janine di Giovanni, author of The Morning They Came for UsElegiac and deeply courageous, a most powerful literary indictment of the unfettered power of the state. A remarkable book -- Philippe Sands, author of East West StreetI was riveted and chastened by Tahir Hamut Izgil's memoir. Izgil's crystalline, courageous prose is a wake-up call for everyone invested in the myth - and also the possibility - of freedom -- Tracy K. Smith, Poet Laureate of the United States of AmericaThis powerful and poignant memoir is an instant classic. He lays bare the vicious genocidal persecution of the precious Uyghur people in a very personal and persuasive way -- Cornel West, author of Democracy MattersAn essential testimony to one of the defining crimes against humanity of the twenty-first century so far. The poet Tahir Hamut Izgil is one of the few Uyghurs who escaped just in time to tell us -- Philip Gourevitch, author of We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our FamiliesA terrifying, compelling read of one family's efforts to escape the jaws that were closing around them -- Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of ChinaAn exceptionally powerful, profoundly lyrical and beautifully translated book - I urge you to read it -- Julia Lovell, author of Maoism: A Global HistoryEven if we can't comprehend why this tragedy is happening in Xinjiang, Tahir Hamut Izgil reminds us why it matters -- Peter Hessler, author of River TownA lived-in page-turner with the slow, grim boil of a Le Carré novel (no shooting, but no hope of justice either, with plenty of code words and offstage violence). Lucid and quietly terrifying * Washington Post *A compelling account of Izgil’s ultimately successful escape to the US. It is a story of mounting fear, as friends disappear one by one, and he and others take to sleeping next to a pile of warm clothes that they can hastily put on if the doorbell rings in the night * Prospect *

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Book SynopsisDhirendra Jha's deeply researched history places Nathuram Godse's life as the juncture of the dangerous fault lines in contemporary India: the quest for independence and the rise of Hindu nationalism.On a wintry Delhi evening on 30 January 1948, Nathuram Godse shot Gandhi at point-blank range, forever silencing the man who had delivered independence to his nation. Godse's journey to this moment of international notoriety from small towns in western India is, by turns, both riveting and wrenching. Drawing from previously unpublished archival material, Jha challenges the standard account of Gandhi's assassination, and offers a stunning view on the making of independent India.Born to Brahmin parents, Godse started off as a child mystic. However, success eluded him. The caste system placed him at the top of society but the turbulent times meant that he soon became a disaffected youth, desperately seeking a position in the infant nation. In such confusing times, Godse was one of hundreds, and later thousands, of young Indian men to be steered into the sheltering fold of early Hindutva, Indian nationalism. His association with early formations of the RSS and far-right thinkers such as Sarvakar proves that he was not working alone. Today he is considered to be a patriotic hero by many for his act of bravery, despite being found guilty in court and executed in 1949.Trade ReviewDhirendra K. Jha has anatomized, with calm resourcefulness, the politics and psychology of a fanatic. He has also written a secret and sinister history of modern India-the one we need to understand our ruinous present -- Pankaj MishraThis book goes beyond the plot that resulted in Mahatma Gandhi's assassination, which the author meticulously analyses. It is indeed highly revealing of the omnipresence of the RSS on the Indian political scene in the 1940s. If the organization did not fight British colonialism and did not contest elections, it was intimately related to Savarkar's Hindu Mahasabha, the first Hindutva party, and, more importantly, organically linked to the Hindu Rashtra Dal, a militant body co-founded by Nathuram Godse - a man who, as Dhirendra K. Jha shows, never left the RSS -- Christophe Jaffrelot, author of Modi's IndiaNot just a very readable and credible account of the plot and the people behind Gandhi's murder, including a psychological analysis of his assassin, but a comprehensive study of the wider politics of the Hindu Mahasabha, the RSS and their leaders, including Savarkar, which makes it a must-read and highly relevant in today's context -- Mridula MukherjeeAlthough the biography of Godse is a biography of an assassin whose psychological profile might indicate his tendency towards extreme actions like political murder, it is also a story of a nation whose identity was forever mutated by the fact of British colonialism and the multiple atrocities that colonialism involved. -- Ron Jacobs * Counterpunch *

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