Prisoner Without Name

by Jacobo Timerman

Book Overview

A classic of world literature back in print in a Spanish-language edition. Wisconsin edition is for sale only in North America. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0394514483
• ISBN13: 9780394514482
• Release Date: April 1981
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Length: 164 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Fantastic book

I used this book in my introduction to Latin America course as a supplementary text. The writing is moving and heartfelt while being historically and politically relevant. Most students read this book in one sitting finding it impossible to put down.

Harrowing

One of the most harrowing books I've ever read. An amazing entreaty against violence of both the left and the right, and a heartbreaking analysis of contemporary anti-Semitism. Comparable at some points perhaps to Koestler's Darkness at Noon, except that it deals with torture in a more direct (and horrifying, since it's nonfiction) way. I wish this were requiring reading in schools.

Siempre la misma pregunta

I won't give a synopsis of the book b/c everyone else has already done that for you. What I can say about this book is that it is an impetus. After you read it, you'll most likely be hungry for more information about this brutal time in a seemingly well-developed country. Questions to consider: Why the silence of the press, with the exception of Timerman's newspaper 'La Opinion' and the 'B.A. Herald?' How could someone treated so horribly come out of it okay? Why did this happen after Pinochet's regime and the Nazi regime? This is post WWII, so why? Where was the rest of the world? The book is splendid, the first chapter gut-wrenching and beautiful. You will love it as much as Elie Wiesel's 'Night.'

Excellent analysis of the totalitarian mindset

Jacobo Timerman has written a gripping and terrifying account of his experiences at the mercy of Argentina's Peronist regime of the late 70's. A well respected, professional journalist in Buenos Aires, he was editor of the major newspaper La Opinión until he was kidnapped by the military for publishing articles critical of their terrorist tactics. He details how as a political prisoner, and more signifigantly as a Jew, he was held and tortured by a military carried away by their own delusions and rationalizations of violence - and by their virulent anti-semitism. Timerman displays a penetrating insight into the mindset of his captors and of a society that tried to ignore what was happening. A must read.

Excellent

Excellent analysis of the methodology behind totalitarian regimes, with emphasis on the persecution of Jews. Personally the most redeeming part I found in this book was Timerman's personal methods to cope with the traumatic torture, and, most applicable to myself, an existence without tenderness and love. His words ring loud and true, his advice is sound, sound, sound.