A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers / Edition 1

by Lawrence Weschler

Overview

During the past fifteen years, one of the most vexing issues facing fledgling transitional democracies around the world--from South Africa to Eastern Europe, from Cambodia to Bosnia--has been what to do about the still-toxic security apparatuses left over from the previous regime. In this now-classic and profoundly influential study, the New Yorker's Lawrence Weschler probes these dilemmas across two gripping narratives (set in Brazil and Uruguay, among the first places to face such concerns), true-life thrillers in which torture victims, faced with the paralysis of the new regime, themselves band together to settle accounts with their former tormentors.

"Disturbing and often enthralling."--New York Times Book Review

"Extraordinarily moving. . . . Weschler writes brilliantly."--Newsday

"Implausible, intricate and dazzling."--Times Literary Supplement

"As Weschler's interviewees told their tales, I paced agitatedly, choked back tears. . . . Weschler narrates these two episodes with skill and tact. . . . An inspiring book."--George Scialabba, Los Angeles Weekly

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226893945
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	07/01/1998
Edition description:	1
Pages:	322
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

A widely honored journalist, Lawrence Weschler is the director of the New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University. He is the author of twelve books, including Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder, Vermeer in Bosnia, and, most recently, Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Foreword
I: A Miracle, A Universe
II: The Reality of the World
Afterword
Notes
1998 Postscript
References
Index