The Resurrected By Joost Hiltermann
P21 Gallery is honoured to host the launch of The Resurrected, the debut novel by renowned author and genocide researcher Joost Hiltermann.
This powerful work of fiction reimagines the harrowing true story of two young men who survived the Anfal genocide in Iraqi Kurdistan. Based on the author's extensive documentary research and testimonies collected during his time with Human Rights Watch (1992–1994), the novel follows their separate escapes from Saddam Hussein's killing fields and their eventual journeys to America. It is a profound story of luck, nerve, perseverance, and the complex, split-soul lives of first-generation immigrants.
According to Lyse Doucet, the BBC's Chief International Correspondent, Joost Hiltermann "colourfully reimagines a forgotten story that once shaped our times in an ambitious quilt of compelling tales, cleverly brought together with a novelist's skill, a scholar's depth, and the empathy of a journalist."
Afsana Press is proud to give this book particular attention for its significant subject and literary merits, offering a unique and innovative way of recounting the story of the Anfal and honouring the memory of its survivors.
Joost Hiltermann is a Dutch writer and researcher. He was the Programme Director for the Middle East & North Africa at the International Crisis Group and was previously at Human Rights Watch. Joost holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He has written for The New York Review of Books, The London Review of Books, Foreign Affairs and other publications. He has published two books: A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq, and the Gassing of Halabja (Cambridge, 2007) and Behind the Intifada: Labor and Women’s Movements in the Occupied Territories (Princeton, 1991). The Resurrected is his debut novel. Joost was one of the main researchers of the genocide of rural Kurds in Iraq for Human Rights Watch in the 1990s, culminating in his fictionalised retelling of the case. He has remained in close contact with the (real) survivors and their families to this day.
Afsana Press is an independent publishing house producing sparkling literary works by authors whose stories have a direct relation to social, political or cultural issues in countries and communities around the world.
