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Waiting to Be Arrested at Night
- Author
- Tahir Hamut Izgil
- Narrator
- Greg Watanabe
- Publisher
- Random House
- Publish Date
- 3 August 2023
- Run Time
- 7 hours 40 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
- Genre
- Memoirs, True stories of survival of abuse and injustice, Political abduction, imprisonment, 'Disappearance' and assassination, Genocide and ethnic cleansing
- Rating
- 5.0 (1 review)
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What to expect
Brought to you by Penguin.
A Uyghur poet's piercing memoir of life under the most coercive surveillance regime in history
*WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE'S JOHN LEONARD PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST BOOK*
*WINNER OF THE CHRISTOPHER G. MOORE PRIZE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS WRITING 2024*
As his friends disappeared one by one, it became clear to Tahir Hamut Izgil that fleeing his home in Xinjiang was his family’s only hope.
In this unforgettable story of courage and survival, Tahir charts the Chinese government’s ongoing destruction of the Uyghur community and way of life in spare, gripping, finely tuned prose.
Waiting to Be Arrested at Night is an urgent call for the world to awaken to a humanitarian catastrophe, and a moving tribute to those Uyghurs whose voices have been silenced.
'Essential reading'
AI WEIWEI, author of 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows
'Deserves to be read widely'
FINANCIAL TIMES
©2023 Tahir Hamut Izgil (P)2023 Penguin Audio
Critics Review
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An urgent tale of survival and subversion
Economist, *Books of the Year*
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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A heart-wrenching but beautifully written memoir
Daily Telegraph
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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
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To call this merely 'a good book' is an understatement - it is essential reading
Ai Weiwei, author of 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows
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An 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 Envy
User Reviews
Book 5.0
Narration 5.0
- No written reviews yet.
Details
- Author
- Tahir Hamut Izgil
- Narrator
- Greg Watanabe
- Duration
- 7 hours 40 minutes
- Release Date
- 3 August 2023
- ISBN
- 9781529908879
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Random House
- Genre
- Memoirs, True stories of survival of abuse and injustice, Political abduction, imprisonment, 'Disappearance' and assassination, Genocide and ethnic cleansing
- Rating
- 5.0(1 review)
- Narration
- 5.0(1 review)
Synopsis
Brought to you by Penguin.A Uyghur poet's piercing memoir of life under the most coercive surveillance regime in history*WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE'S JOHN LEONARD PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST BOOK**WINNER OF THE CHRISTOPHER G. MOORE PRIZE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS WRITING 2024*As his friends disappeared one by one, it became clear to Tahir Hamut Izgil that fleeing his home in Xinjiang was his family’s only hope.In this unforgettable story of courage and survival, Tahir charts the Chinese government’s ongoing destruction of the Uyghur community and way of life in spare, gripping, finely tuned prose.Waiting to Be Arrested at Night is an urgent call for the world to awaken to a humanitarian catastrophe, and a moving tribute to those Uyghurs whose voices have been silenced.'Essential reading'AI WEIWEI, author of 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows'Deserves to be read widely'FINANCIAL TIMES©2023 Tahir Hamut Izgil (P)2023 Penguin Audio
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