Böcker av Tahir Hamut Izgil

A Uyghur poet's piercing memoir of life under the most coercive surveillance regime in history***LITHUB'S #1 BEST-REVIEWED NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023*****A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023****AN ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023***WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE'S JOHN LEONARD PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST BOOK*'Essential reading' AI WEIWEI, author of 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows'Deserves to be read widely... Beautiful' FINANCIAL TIMESIf you took an Uber in Washington DC a few years ago, there's a chance your driver was one of the greatest living Uyghur poets, and one of only a handful from his minority Muslim community to escape the genocide being visited upon his homeland in western China.A successful filmmaker, innovative poet and prominent intellectual, Tahir Hamut Izgil had long been acquainted with state surveillance and violence, having spent three years in a labour camp on fabricated charges.But in 2017, the Chinese government's repression of its Uyghur citizens assumed a terrifying new intensity: critics were silenced; conversations became hushed; passports were confiscated; and Uyghurs were forced to provide DNA samples and biometric data.As Izgil's friends disappeared one by one, it became clear that fleeing the country was his family's only hope.Escape to America spared Izgil's family the internment camps that have swallowed over a million Uyghurs. It also allowed this rare personal testimony of the Xinjiang genocide to reach the wider world.Waiting to Be Arrested at Night charts the ongoing destruction of a community and a way of life. It is a call for the world to awaken to a humanitarian catastrophe, an unforgettable story of courage, escape and survival, and a moving tribute to Izgil's friends and fellow Uyghurs whose voices have been silenced.

"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 labor 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. Was the first sign when Tahir was interrogated for hours after a phone call with a fellow poet in the Netherlands? Or when his old friend was sentenced to life in prison simply for calling for Uyghurs' legal rights to be enforced? Perhaps it was when the police seized Uyghurs' radios and installed jamming equipment to cut them off from the outside world. Once Tahir noticed that the park near his home was nearly empty because so many neighbors had been arrested, he knew the police would be coming for him any day. One night, after Tahir's daughters were asleep, he placed by his door a sturdy pair of shoes, a sweater, and a coat so that he could stay warm if the police came for him in the middle of the night. It was 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"--