xii, 199, [3] pages. Illustrations. Index. Some sticker residue on the front

xii, 199, [3] pages. Illustrations. Index. Some sticker residue on the front and back of the DJ. Scuff on fep. Minor page soiling noted. Inscribed by the author on the title page. Inscription reads For Kate and Hesh at home in my heart Love Lawrence Weschler. The three narratives by Lawrence Weschler here joined together were conceived from the start as a sort of triptych: three tales about basically decent expatriates (the first an Iraqi, the second a Czech, the third an Afrikaner), each of whom tries to do the right thing with regard to the totalitarian regime holding sway over his homeland--the thing we readers, too, might have done, if only we were much more courageous than we are--only to end up thoroughly wracked and bollixed. Taken together, these gripping narratives afford a sort of double catscan into the natures of both modern totalitarianism and timeless exile. Like all drama, the battle for human rights has three unities. It also has three principal territories--the former Communist world, the former anti-Communist world, and the actually existing Third World. Not many guides are reliable in any of these terrains. Lawrence Weschler is without peer in having been prescient and morally exact about all three. Lawrence Weschler (born 1952) is an author of works of creative nonfiction. A graduate of Cowell College of the University of California, Santa Cruz (1974), Weschler was for over twenty years (1981-2002) a staff writer at The New Yorker, where his work shuttled between political tragedies and cultural comedies. He is a two-time winner of the George Polk Awards-for Cultural Reporting in 1988 and Magazine Reporting in 1992-and was also a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award (1998). His books of political reportage include The Passion of Poland (1984); A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers (1990); and Calamities of Exile: Three Nonfiction Novellas (1998). He recently graduated to director emeritus of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU, where he has been a fellow since 1991 and was director from 2001-2013, and from which base he had tried to start his own semiannual journal of writing and visual culture, Omnivore. He is also the artistic director emeritus, still actively engaged, with the Chicago Humanities Festival. He is a contributing editor to McSweeney's, The Threepenny Review, and The Virginia Quarterly Review. Derived from a Kirkus review: Beautiful but harrowing chronicles of three exiles that probe the moral and personal risks of their encounters with totalitarianism. Here are three tales about expatriates who attempt, with often disastrous results to themselves and their families, to oppose the totalitarian regimes of their homelands. A staff writer for the New Yorker, Weschler brings characteristic style and intelligence to bear on his portrayal of the manner in which totalitarianism corrupts everyone, including its most steadfast opponents. Weschler has chosen "very edgy guys" whose quirkiness bolsters them in their defiance. Kanan Makiya adopted the pseudonym Samir al-Khalil for his books attacking Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Aside from his record of Iraqi state terror, Makiya also penned a critique of those artists who collaborated with Saddam's regime. Prominent among them was his own father, Mohammed Makiya, Iraq's foremost architect, whom he loves and, in many ways, respects. While family ties lie most obviously at the center of Makiya's conflicted feelings, Weschler demonstrates that opposition to a regime often results in fragmented families. Jan Kavan, a former student activist, spent two decades smuggling opposition materials in and out of Czechoslovakia, only to find himself, incredibly, accused of collaboration when he came home following the collapse of the Communist regime. Weschler describes the Kafkaesque situation, illuminating the difficulties raised by society's need to both forgive and to find someone to punish for its own...