Guantanamo Diary Lib/E

A vision of hell, beyond Orwell, beyond Kafka: perpetual torture prescribed by the mad doctors of Washington.

-- "John le Carre, #1 New York Times beselling author"

Mohamedou Ould Slahi's demand for simple justice should be our call to action. Because what's at stake in this case is not just the fate of one man who managed, against all odds, to tell his story but the future of our democracy.

-- "Glenn Greenwald, New York Times bestselling author"
Guantanamo Diary will leave you shell-shocked.-- "Vanity Fair"
Everyone should read Guantanamo Diary....Just by virtue of having been written inside Guantanamo, Slahi's book would be a triumph of humanity over chaos. But Guantanamo Diary turns out to be especially human. Slahi doesn't just humanize himself; he also humanizes his guards and interrogators. That's not to say that he excuses them. Just the opposite: he presents them as complex individuals who know kindness from cruelty and right from wrong.-- "New Yorker"

Gripping and depressing...[an] extraordinary memoir...Mr. Slahi emerges from the pages of his diary, handwritten in 2005, as a curious and generous personality, observant, witty, and devout but by no means fanatical...Guantanamo Diary forces us to consider why the United States has set aside the cherished idea that a timely trial is the best way to determine who deserves to be in prison.

-- "New York Times"
Slahi is a fluent, engaging and at times eloquent writer, even in his fourth language, English....Slahi's book offers a first-person account of the experience of torture. For that reason alone, the book is necessary reading to those seeking to understand the dangers that Guantanamo's continued existence poses to Americans in the world.-- "Washington Post"

You don't have to be convinced of Slahi's innocence to be appalled by the incidents he describes.

-- "San Francisco Chronicle"
Guantanamo Diary stands as perhaps the most human depiction of an entire post-9/11 system.-- " Globe and Mail"
An historical watershed and a literary triumph....The diary is as close as most of us will ever get to understanding the living hell this man--who has never been charged with a crime, and whom a judge ordered released in 2010--continues to suffer.-- " Salon"
Literary history was made today with the publication of the first-ever book by a still-imprisoned Guantanamo detainee....As astonishing as the scope of the abuse is Slahi's enduring warmth, even for his torturers and jailers.-- "Huffington Post"
The tragedy of Slahi's memoir is not just his grave abuse at the hands of U.S. officials. It is that....Slahi's account of life--if it can be called that--at Guantanamo is not the exception. It is the rule, and it continues today.-- "Reuters"

Written in the colloquial if limited English [Slahi] picked up during his captivity, its pages disfigured with thousands of pitch-black 'redactions' courtesy of the American intelligence agents who play such major parts, the work is a kind of dark masterpiece, a sometimes unbearable epic of pain, anguish, and bitter humor that the Dostoyevsky of The House of the Dead would have recognized and embraced. At its root is a maddening ambiguity born of a system governed not by any recognizable rules of evidence or due process but by suspicion, paranoia, and violence.

-- "New York Times Book Review"

This riveting prison diary...captures the prisoner's suffering and disorientation, yet has currents of reflectiveness and empathy as Slahi strives to understand his captors and connect with their humane impulses...Tis searing narrative exposes the dark side of the 'war on terror'-the system of arbitrary imprisonment and 'enhanced interrogation' where justice gives way to lawless brutality.

-- "Publishers Weekly (starred review)"

This is an incredible document and a hell of a story.

-- "Steve Kroft, correspondent for 60 Minutes"

Narrator Peter Ganim's accent enables the listener to imagine the Mauritanian author himself telling his story and helps to separate the author's passages from the editor's speculative and explanatory footnotes.

-- "AudioFile"

Here, finally, is the disturbing and stirring story the United States government tried for years to conceal. Mohamedou Ould Slahi's ordeal shocks the conscience, to be sure. But on display in these pages is something much deeper as well: an enduring faith in our common humanity and in the power of truth to leap prison walls and bridge divides. With devastating clarity and considerable wit, Guantanamo Diary reminds us why we call certain things human rights.

-- "Anthony Romero, executive director, American Civil Liberties Union"

Harrowing...Slahi describes the brutal interrogation he endured at Guantanamo-which was one of the two most extreme interrogations conducted there-and he does so vividly, sometimes nauseatingly. Slahi writes rather well, and even the many redactions don't really get in the way. It's well worth a read.

-- "Benjamin Wittes, editor-in-chief of Lawfare"