A passionate, illuminating account of the battle over “Britain’s last colony in Africa.”
Little-known story of an archipelago in the Indian Ocean that was evacuated and appropriated by British authorities in the 1970s.
As a British lawyer and longtime observer of international law, Sands, author of The Ratline and East West Street, became intensely interested in the case of the inhabitants of the Chagos archipelago—part of Mauritius and thereby inherited by Britain at the end of the Napoleonic wars—who longed to return to their homes after decades of being forcibly evacuated. Since Mauritius gained independence in 1968, jurisdiction of Chagos remained uncertain, and the international court at the Hague subsequently ruled that Britain had to allow the residents to return, a dictate it still ignores. Sands follows the personal travails of Liseby Elysé, from the island of Peros Banhos, who was rounded up by the British with her family and few belongings to leave the island in 1973. Secretly, the British were allowing the Americans to remake neighboring island Diego Garcia into a military base as part of the Department of Defense’s “Strategic Island Concept.” The author examines the incremental international push for decolonization since the end of World War I, specifically the work of Ralph Bunche and 1945’s Chapter XI of the U.N. Charter, the “Declaration Regarding Non-Self-Governing Territories,” as well as U.N. Resolution 1514, designed “to hold South Africa to account for its racial mistreatment of the inhabitants of South West Africa [now Namibia].” However, despite the independence of Mauritius, Diego Garcia served as a convenient military base from which to launch the Iraq War in 2003. In this poignant narrative, Sands describes his advocacy for Elysé and her family; they were able to visit Peros Banhos together even as the British have remained adamant, pending appeals. The book includes maps and photos.
A passionate, illuminating account of the battle over “Britain’s last colony in Africa.”Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780593535097
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
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