Long Shadows: Truth, Lies and History - Hardcover

Paris, Erna

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1582341567 ISBN 13: 9781582341569

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA, 2001

Synopsis

Long Shadows offers a personal examination into the shifting terrain of war and memory that seeks to understand how nations come to terms with their most painful history. Combining storytelling with observation, Paris takes the reader on a remarkable journey through four continents to explore how nations reinvent themselves after cataclysmic events. She seeks out politicians and powerbrokers, as well as men and women living in the aftermath of repression, asking the question: Who gets to decide what actually happened yesterday, then to propagate the tale? How do people live with the consequences? Any why is it that many countries cannot lay the past to rest?

Her journey takes her to the United States, with its memories of slavery; to South Africa, to sit in on a Truth and Reconciliation hearing to heal the divisions of apartheid; to Japan, to probe the unresolved struggled for truth in Second World history; to France, still wrestling with its wartime legacy of collaboration; to Germany, where ferocious 'memory battles' continue to swirl around the Holocaust; and to the former Yugoslavia, where she exposes the cynical shaping of historical memory, and the way the international community responded to the lethal outcome.

Paris takes us directly to the places of reckoning; she finds hope in the way ordinary people grapple with defining events of their lives, and in the changing face of international justice. Long Shadows illuminates the modern world and makes us question where we stand as individuals in relation to our own collective histories.

About this title

From the Publisher

'I would love to see this book taught in every history class in America.' -Iris Chang, author of The Rape of Nanking
'Enlightening...Riveting...Paris raises questions of enormous importance.' -Kirkus
'...convincingly demonstrates that memory is not only selective but subject to calculated efforts to serve personal needs and national interests.' -The Christian Science Monitor
'Paris gives us a rich, if painful, inventory of the recent, dubious uses to which we are putting the past.' -Washington Post Book World

From the Back Cover

"The reader is changed forever by reading Long Shadows. Working one's way through this book is akin to listening to complete symphonies of Gustav Mahler in a single sitting—an overwhelming experience, one that raises the profound philosophical questions of our time. Paris's analysis and storytelling talents never let the reader go. Deeply moving." —Quill and Quire

“[an] ambitious…superb work of popular history and thought. [a] brilliantly conceived quest… Long Shadows is simply first-rate writing…an intellectual triumph, in its refusal to succumb to denial and its hopeful faith that it’s better to know.” —Stan Persky, Vancouver Sun

"[Erna] Paris…intelligently examines [memory] within the context of national remembrance." — Canadian Jewish News

"[ Long Shadows] rings with the moral authority of a voice raised in defence of human rights and cries out for no-amnesty accountability for war crimes." — Montreal Gazette

"[a] powerful and sombre book…Paris’s belief in an honest search for the facts…is admirable and ultimately inspiring." — The Globe and Mail

”[Paris] walks with a keen eye, a journalist’s skill at detail…a high intelligence and a deft pen…. [A] timely contribution.” — Ottawa CItizen

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 1582341567
• ISBN 13: 9781582341569
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 480