Who Killed Daniel Pearl? - Softcover

Bernard-Henri Levy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0715633228 ISBN 13: 9780715633229

Publisher: Duckworth & Co, 2004

Synopsis

French celebrity BHL's book commanded huge publicity and review attention on first hardcover publication and is now re-launched in paperback It is one of the most ghastly images of our time: the on-camera murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. But to acclaimed writer Bernard-Henri Levy the videotape was immediately suspect. Why did it still include a ransom demand - for F-16 fighters to be delivered to Pakistan? Were the kidnappers really just maniacal fundamentalists who killed Pearl because he was American and Jewish? Operating via a series of ruses - such as using his expired diplomatic passport - Levy set off to trace Pearl's final steps...and those of his killer. The result is a spell-binding book that combines a novelist's eye with riveting investigative journalism, as Levy travels the globe for the terrifying true story: to Los Angeles to talk to Pearl's family about his final, encrypted words; to England and Bosnia on the trail of the plot's mastermind; to Dubai, on the terrorist's money trail; to New Delhi, Islamabad, Rawalpindi and, most perilously, to Karachi. In this city, terrorists cross paths with nuclear scientists and the dreaded "services" and long-

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Review

Bernard-Henri Levy's Who Killed Daniel Pearl? offers a harrowing look at Pearl's life and tragic death wrought with a unique blending of journalism, novelist's imagination, and autobiography. Levy--an acclaimed French philosopher and bestselling author in Europe--in 2002 launched a one-year journey to understand Wall Street Journal reporter Pearl and the circumstances that led to his murder in Pakistan; the briskly paced result traces a thread from Pearl's killers through Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence and, possibly, to Al-Quaida. In building his case, Levy takes none of the news stories on face value. At great personal risk, he follows the same steps that Pearl walked to the very farm house where the journalist was killed. He seems to question everything and provides bearing witness as the truth-telling reportage required in a nation like Pakistan that "has lost even the very idea of what a free press could be."

But Levy does not let his interrogative mind crush the emotional weight of his subject. He questions himself frequently, undermines his own assumptions, and continually returns to the man, Pearl: "a man who was ordinary and exemplary, normal and admirable." Ultimately, the book is a powerful work of compassion as much as a valuable bit of detective work. It is about a good man who died too soon as well as the terrible alliances that could perform such an act against him. Levy does not want Pearl's lessons to be lost to the world. He, like Pearl, seeks a "gentle Islam" that will resist the ring of blood and hate in what Levy calls "the beginning of the grand struggle of the century." --Patrick O’Kelley

About the Author

Bernard-Henri Levy is France's leading philosopher and one of the most esteemed and best-selling writers in Europe. He has also served on diplomatic missions for the French government - most recently, to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. He first wrote about the region in 1971, as a war correspondent covering the conflict between India and Pakistan over Bangladesh. The first of his 30 books, Red India, was also about that conflict. He lives in Paris. James X. Mitchell is a screenwriter and translator living in Paris.

About this edition

• Publisher: Duckworth & Co
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0715633228
• ISBN 13: 9780715633229
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 480