First published 2021
Mohamedou Ould Slahi sits in his cell at Guantánamo Bay, writing the story of his imprisonment. For fourteen years, the United States holds him without charges. Federal courts order his release, but he remains detained. Guards censor his words heavily when his diary first appears in 2015. Slahi documents interrogations, daily routines, and the psychological weight of indefinite detention. He writes with unexpected humor about his captors and surprising grace toward a system that has stripped away his freedom. His words reveal both terror and resilience. After his 2016 release, Slahi restores the censored passages, completing his account. The diary captures not just a legal injustice but the human cost of America's post-9/11 detention policies. Slahi transforms his suffering into a record of survival and an examination of how people endure the unendurable.
Genres: non-fiction, biography-memoir, 21st-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: survival, true-story
Setting: Guantánamo Bay
Period: 21st-century
464 pages · Paperback · Little, Brown Paperbacks
Content warnings: torture