Description
Bloomsbury presents Come to This Court and Cry by Linda Kinstler read by Laurence Bouvard
A TABLET AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BOOK OF THE YEAR
Shortlisted for the Wingate Literary Prize
A tremendous feat of storytelling propelled by numerous twists and revelations yet anchored by a deep moral seriousness Enthralling Guardian
Part detective story part family history part probing inquiry into how best to reckon with the horrors of a previous century Astonishing Patrick Radden Keefe author of Empire of Pain
Outstanding Philippe Sands author of The Ratline and East West Street
To probe the past is to submit the memory of ones ancestors to a certain kind of trial In this case the trial came to me
A few years ago Linda Kinstler discovered that a man fifty years dead a former Nazi who belonged to the same killing unit as her grandfather was the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation in Latvia The proceedings threatened to pardon his crimes They put on the line hardwon facts about the Holocaust at the precise moment that the last living survivors the last legal witnesses were dying
Across the world Second World Warera cases are winding their way through the courts Survivors have been telling their stories for the better part of a century and still judges ask for proof Where do these stories end What responsibilities attend their transmission so many generations on How many ghosts need to be put on trial for us to consider the crime scene of history closed
In this major nonfiction debut Linda Kinstler investigates both her family story and the archives of ten nations to examine what it takes to prove history in our uncertain century Probing and profound Come to this Court and Cry is about the nature of memory and justice when revisionism ultranationalism and denialism make it feel like history is slipping out from under our feet It asks how the stories we tell about ourselves our families and our nations are passed down how we alter them and what they demand of us
Kinstler reminds us of the dangerous instability of truth and testimony and the urgent need in the twentyfirst century to keep telling the history of the twentieth Anne Applebaum
A masterpiece Peter Pomerantsev
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