Waiting to Be Arrested at Night

A Uyghur Poet's Memoir of China's Genocide

De: Tahir Hamut Izgil, Joshua L. Freeman

Narrado por: Greg Watanabe

Duración: 7 h y 40 m

Resumen del Editor

Brought to you by Penguin.

A poet's account of one of the world's most urgent humanitarian crises, and a harrowing tale of a family's escape from genocide

One by one, Tahir Hamut Izgil's friends disappeared. The Chinese government's brutal persecution of the Uyghur people had continued for years, but in 2017 it assumed a terrifying new scale. The Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim minority group in western China, were experiencing an echo of the worst horrors of the twentieth century, amplified by China's establishment of an all-seeing high-tech surveillance state. Over a million people have vanished into China's internment camps for Muslim minorities.

Tahir, a prominent poet and intellectual, had been no stranger to persecution. After he attempted to travel abroad in 1996, police tortured him until he confessed to fabricated charges and sent him to a re-education through labour camp. But even having endured three years in the camp, he could never have predicted the Chinese government's radical solution to the Uyghur question two decades later. When he noticed that the park near his home was nearly empty because so many neighbours had been arrested, he knew the police would be coming for him any day. It soon became clear to Tahir and his wife that fleeing the country was the family's only hope.

Waiting to Be Arrested at Night is 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.

©2023 Tahir Hamut Izgil (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Tahir Hamut Izgil's gripping book Waiting to Be Arrested at Night evokes haunting memories of the terror and persecution he endured in his homeland, where dreams are turned into nightmares... To call this merely 'a good book' is an understatement." (Ai Weiwei)

"I was riveted and chastened by Tahir Hamut Izgil's memoir of surveillance, internment, violent persecution and miraculous flight. Izgil's crystalline, courageous prose is a wake-up call for everyone invested in the myth - and also the possibility - of freedom." (Tracy K. Smith)

"Tahir Hamut Izgil's powerful and poignant memoir is an instant classic. He lays bare the vicious genocidal persecution of the precious Uyghur people in a very personal and persuasive way. His grand poetic temperament exemplifies the unstoppable resilience of the rich Uyghur soul." (Cornel West, author of Democracy Matters)