'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

My 'Atrocities' book-- about to ship!

I can't figure out why I'm so excited about my new book, Amnesty After Atrocity?: Healing Nations After Genocide and War Crimes... Maybe because it was a new, intellectually challenging, but ultimately very inspiring subject to work on?

Anyway, last week, the folks at Paradigm sent me the book's cover (big PDF file there; be warned.) It's absolutely beautiful. It features a pen-and-ink drawing by the great Mozambican artist Malangatana that to me looks very Guernica-esque. It's titled "O Aberto"-- "the Opening". You can see the "opening" there just above the middle of the picture, if you look.

(I just found another version of that image on the website of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, which owns the picture. And on this web-page of theirs you can learn that this picture-- described as a screenprint, so perhaps there are other copies?-- was donated to the Court by Justice Albie Sachs, who is one of my heroes.)

Anyway, the blurbs on the back cover of the book are fabulous. I had no idea the folks there at Paradigm were gathering such great blurbs for me while I was traveling over the summer...

Here's a downloadable order form (also a large PDF file) for the book. Alternatively, if you go to the Paradigm website you can order the book there and get a non-trivial discount that brings the shipped price of the hardcover edition in at under $70.

Okay, I know that's an astronomical figure for many people. Self included. The paperback-- priced at under $25-- will be out in January.

Here, by the way, is the Table of Contents:

1. Atrocities, Conflicts, and Peacemaking

2. Rwanda: Court Processes after Mass Violence

3. South Africa: Amnesties, Truth-Seeking—and Reconciliation?

4. Mozambique: Heal and Rebuild

5. Comparing Postconflict Justice in Rwanda, South Africa, and Mozambique

6. Restoring Peacemaking, Revaluing History

The amazing thing about books is that they really do take on a life of their own. They are surely the artefact for which the term "shelf-life" has the most applicability. This remains true today, even with all the great electronic gadgetry we have... I mean, it really is not as much fun to curl up in bed or stretch out on a couch and read stuff off a laptop, is it?

I'm not sure, though, that the subject of my book is one that you necessarily want to read about just before going to bed. Sorry about that...