Published August 2023

Translator Joshua Freeman

Narrator Greg Watanabe

For my 14th book in my Around the Globe in 193 Books Challenge I read Waiting to Be Arrested at Night: A Uyghur Poet’s Memoir of China’s Genocide by Tahir Hamit Izgil to represent China.

Excellent book! Informative and emotional. No graphic descriptions of violence.

I listened to the audio narrated by Greg Watanabe and very much appreciated it.

Tahir, a poet and intellectual who worked as a movie director, had already been tortured and incarcerated for 3 years for attempting to study abroad. The story pickup with his release and his desire to find a safe way to escape the country with his wife and two daughters. As the pace of persecution picks up, and friends and family begin to vanish into labor and re-education camps, they all realize time is running out. 

Parts that really stood out – 

• Book banning – it started out slowly with explicitly pro-Uyghur books and gradually expanded to any book that could be perceived to contain Uyghur culture, history, or religion. The people who banned or demanded the books be banned didn’t read the books. Instead they repeated statements prepared by others. A pattern that all repressive states follow when it comes to book banning.

• Refugees – the story of Tahir’s friends who escaped to Sweden was heartbreaking. It emphasized the terror people need to feel to leave behind everyone and everything they love only to take a life-threatening journey in hopes of finding safety in another country. Hopefully reading this story can bring a new degree of humanity and compassion to the discourse around refugees.

• Systemic racism, surveillance, autocratic leadership, anti-intellectualism – there’s a lot packed into this book.

My Rating 5/5