An unsugared account that demonstrates the admirable, unbreakable bond of friends, parents and countrymen.
The three American hikers imprisoned in Iran in 2009 alternate relaying their versions of their scary, uncertain ordeal.
Trekking up a mountain in northern Iraqi Kurdistanm, the three 20-something Americans working in the Middle East as journalists and teachers wandered across the Iranian border and were thrown into prison, suspected of espionage. The two young men, friends Bauer and Fattal, were held for two years. Shourd, Bauer’s fiancee, was released after a year, and she employed her notoriety to get the others out. Indeed, they became convenient pawns in the ongoing political enmity between the United States and Iran, used to apply pressure where needed in discussing sanctions and nuclear arsenals. In their well-developed and detailed accounts, told in alternate first-person voices, the three remind the world how human, vulnerable and terribly isolated they were during their months of incarceration, when they knew little of what was going on in the outside world and existed day by day in an entrenched survival mode. Shuttled around blindfolded, with Shourd wearing hijab, they started several hunger strikes at first when the guards separated them and soon were transported to the dreaded Evin Prison in Tehran. Managing the guards was key, as was learning to stand up for themselves in terms of the small liberties they were allowed, such as spending a precious few hours together daily in the courtyard. Shourd endured solitary since she wasn’t allowed to mix with Iranians, while the two men roomed with each other and devised all kinds of mental-exercise games—e.g., studying Morse code and memorizing poetry. As a Jew, Fattal became more religiously observant in jail, and all three studied the Quran. All were critical of American government policy before their incarceration and emerged from their ordeal unbowed and outspoken.
An unsugared account that demonstrates the admirable, unbreakable bond of friends, parents and countrymen.Pub Date: March 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-547-98553-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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