Overview

This is the fictionalized story of a genocide as told by some who lived it - as victims, perpetrators, or witnesses. The story is based on the author's testimonial and documentary research for Human Rights Watch in northern Iraq in 1992-1994 and thereafter. He has remained in regular contact with the two survivors and their families to this day. In particular, it's the story of two young men who were dragged to Saddam Hussein's killing grounds and, separately, managed to escape. Eventually they found their way to America - to live the protected but split-soul lives typical of first-generation immigrants. It's a story of luck, pluck, and perseverance, and many setbacks along the way.

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9781068495830

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Reviews

""This unconventional, witty, harrowing, compassionate, and engaging novel tells the story of one of the great horrors of the late 20th century, the Anfal campaign against Iraqi Kurds. It is a strange and wonderful book that could only have been written by Joost Hiltermann, one of the world's leading experts on that genocide and himself a character in this indelible tale.""-Nathan Thrall, author of A Day in the Life of Abed Salama /// ""Joost Hiltermann colourfully reimagines a forgotten story that once shaped our times in an ambitious quilt of compelling tales, cleverly brought together with a novelist's skill, a scholar's depth, and the empathy of a journalist who lived this history.""-Lyse Doucet, Chief International Correspondent of the BBC /// ""Joost Hiltermann has brought the texture, the context, the complexity and the pain of the genocide of Iraqi Kurds to life in a way that transcends cold data, resurrecting the victims, both those who died and those who survived. He thus succeeds in rehumanizing the realities of the crime, making those for whom this is not a footnote in history but a personal nightmare without end real again.""-Barbara Bodine, Director, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, and Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University; former U.S. Ambassador to Yemen /// ""Through this strikingly original combination of oral history, personal memoir, and moral reflection, Joost Hiltermann draws on his decades of first-hand experience to paint a memorable portrait of a small group of individuals who survived the worst atrocity ever inflicted on the Kurds. His story carries a powerful message: that for the sake of our common humanity nothing is more important than to bear witness to the past and tell the stories the world would often prefer to forget.""-George Black, author of The Long Reckoning: A Story of War, Peace, and Redemption in Vietnam

Author Information

Joost Hiltermann is a Dutch researcher and writer. He was the Programme Director for the Middle East & North Africa at the International Crisis Group and was previously at Human Rights Watch. Joost holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He has written for The New York Review of Books, The London Review of Books, Foreign Affairs and other publications. He has published two books: A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq, and the Gassing of Halabja (Cambridge, 2007) and Behind the Intifada: Labor and Women's Movements in the Occupied Territories (Princeton, 1991). The Resurrected is his debut novel. Joost has been one of the main researchers of the genocide against the Kurds, culminating his knowledge of the case in this fictional retelling.

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