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Waiting to Be Arrested at Night: A Uyghur Poet’s Memoir of China’s Genocide
Top of the pile
91
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
86/100Critics
96/100Scholars
Author:
Tahir Hamut Izgil, Joshua L Freeman
Publisher:
Penguin Press
Date:
August 1, 2023
The story of the political, social, and cultural destruction of Tahir Hamut Izgil's homeland. Among leading Uyghur intellectuals and writers, he is the only one known to have escaped China since the mass internments began. His book is a call for the world to awaken to the unfolding catastrophe, and a tribute to his friends and fellow Uyghurs whose voices have been silenced.
What The Reviewers Say
There are no scenes of torture, no violence and few sweeping proclamations about genocide. Izgil writes with calculated restraint. As his title suggests, the terror is in the anticipation.
One of the best available histories of the genocidal policies in Xinjiang since 2015, and is especially valuable as an on-the-ground, first-person account.
Lucid and quietly terrifying.
It is suffused... by a deep sense of sadness, and of despondency even amid hope.
