Links to all English language reviews

of Guantánamo Diary 

 

 

Mark Danner, NYT Sunday Book Review, 1/20/15, “Guantánamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi”

Jenifer Fenton, Al Jazeera, 1/20/15, “Guantánamo Diary: A tale of American torture”

Deborah Pearlstein, Washington Post, 1/20/15, “Guantánamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi”

Lucy Popescu, The Independent, 1/20/15, “Guantanamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi: A sobering, chilling read”

Publishers Weekly, starred review, “Guantanamo Diary”

Tim Stanley, The Telegraph, 1/22/15, “Guantánamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi, ‘a necessary book’”

Ian Tuttle, The National Review, 1/22/15, “Slahi’s Tall Tales from GTMO”

Phillippe Sands, Financial Times, 1/23/15, “Guantánamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi”

Elias Isquith, Salon, 1/24/15, “Our “American Sniper” sickness: How American exceptionalism wrought Guantanamo”

Scott Shane, New York Times, 1/25/15, “From Inside Prison, a Terrorism Suspect Shares His Diary”

Tony Allen-Mills, The Sunday Times, 1/25/15, “Guantanamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi”

Caleb Lauer, The National (UAE), 1/29/15, “A life in limbo: Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s Guantánomo Diary is a shocking indictment of the ’war on terror’”

David Burr Gerard, Bibliophile, 1/29/15, “Inside Guantánamo Bay: Detainee Mohamedou Slahi’s Harrowing Memoir”

The Economist, 1/31/15, “Blame Game”

Shami Chakrabarti, The Observer, 2/2/15, “Guantánamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi – devastating, enraging, and funny”

Joshua Rothman, The New Yorker, 2/13/15, “Read Guantánamo Diary”

Christian Lorentzen, London Review of Books, 2/5/15, “We’ll keep humiliating you with American [REDACTED]”

Tom Carter, World Socialist Website, 2/6/15, “Guantánamo Diary: A book that needs to be read”

Pankaj Mishra, The Guardian, 2/13/15, “The Global War on Terror Has Found Its True Witness”

Tamim Sadikali, BookMunch, 2/15/15, “This is a work of inestimable power — Guantánamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi”

Anne Richardson, Los Angeles Review of Books, 2/15/15, “Guantánamo Diary: Random American Justice”

Jeff Sparrow, Sydney Morning Herald, 2/21/15, “The diary of Guantanamo prisoner Mahamedou Ould Slahi”

Lawrence Douglas, Irish Times, 2/27/15, “Torture: an Intimate History”

L. Michael Hager, Truthout, 3/8/15, “Guantanamo Diary: A Tale of Captivity, Rendition and Torture”

Samuel Thrope, Haaretz, 3/15/15, “An Israeli Undercurrent Rippling Through Guantanamo”

Noa Yachot, Huffington Post, 3/22/15, “Guantánamo Diary: An Epic for Our Times”

Darryl Li, The New Inquiry, 3/25/15, “Empire Records”

Steven Doyle, Bloomfield Review, 4/1/15, “Guantanamo Diary”

John Yargo, The Millions, 4/15/15, “Reign of Terror: Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s ‘Guantanámo Diary’”

Scott Korb, The New Yorker, 4/16/15, “Guantánamo Diary and the American Slave Narrative”

Chris Serres, Minneapolis Star Tribune, 5/5/15 (reprinted South China Morning Post 6/6/15), “Guantánamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi”

Maisaa Youssef, Jadaliyya, 5/19/15, “Reading Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s Guantanamo Diary”

Amir Hafizi, The Malaysian Reserve, 6/10/15, “Guantanamo Diary”

Chris Herlinger, National Catholic Reporter, 7/22/15, “Still-detained author’s memoir from Guantanamo a strange, searing read”

Zoe Bedell, Lawfare, 7/27/15, “Life and Times of a Guantanamo Detainee”; response, Just Security, 7/28/15, Skeptical of Guantánamo Diary? Question the US Government Instead”

Chip Posten, Ashville Citizen-Times, 8/24/15, “‘Guantanamo Diary’ details appalling injustice”

Akshay Ahuja, The Dark Mountain Blog, 9/9/15, “At the Mercy of Fools”; reprinted in Counterpunch, 9/24/15

Marisa Egerstrom, Harvard Divinity Review, Summer/Fall 2015, “The Gospel of Guantánamo”

Theodore McCombs, ElectricLit, 12/4/15, “Alice in Guantánamo: Reading Carroll in the Gitmo Age”

Azadeh Shahshahani, with Leila Sayed-Taha, Huffington Post, 1/6/16, “A Review of ‘Guantanamo Diary'”

Steve Coll, The New York Review of Books, 1/14/16, “An Eloquent Voice from Guantánamo”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From The Guardian, 8/12/14

Guantánamo prisoner to publish ‘harrowing’ memoirs

Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s diary is set to lift the lid on treatment of prisoners in Guantánamo Bay in Cuba

by Alison Flood, Tuesday 12 August 2014, Guantanamo Bay, Behind barbed wire–Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian who has been detained in Guantánamo since 2002 despite never having been charged with a crime by the US, is to publish an account of his experiences next year, detailing the multiple forms of torture to which he has been subjected and “shatter[ing]” the secrecy that surrounds the Cuban prison. 

Slahi’s book, which has just been acquired at auction, is the first diary to be released by a still-imprisoned Guantánamo detainee, said publisher Canongate. Written in 2005, in his segregation cell, it started out [more]

From The Los Angeles Times, 8/12/14

A ‘terrifying’ Guantanamo prison memoir coming in 2015

by Hector Tobar, August 12, 2014–Mohamedou Ould Slahi has been described by one former Guantanamo prosecutor as the “Forrest Gump” of the Guantanamo detainees. A slight and frenetic man, he seems to have known, or met, or crossed paths with key Al Qaeda figures. But it isn’t clear that he’s ever done anything wrong.

Slahi turned himself in to the authorities in his native Mauritania in 2001, was later handed over to the United States, and has been in custody ever since, though never charged with a crime. He’s still being held in Guantanamo–where he has [more]