Prison Time in Sana'a

Lingvo: English

Eldonita je 18-a de decembro 2021 de Medina Publishing, Limited.

ISBN:: 978-0-9929808-7-0

(1 recenzo)

Prison Time in Sana'a tells the story of Dr Abdulkader Al-Guneid's harrowing experience inside jail in Yemen's capital shortly after it was taken over by Houthi rebels.

In his hometown of Taiz, Al-Guneid, a medical doctor, had been an outspoken figure on Yemeni politics for decades. In recent years, his social media and interviews were read around the world and attracted a global following from an audience anxious to hear an unbiased explanation of the underlying roots of the conflict. Ultimately, his activism placed him in the movement's crosshairs, leading to his abduction on 5 August 2015 and incarceration in an undisclosed Houthi jail in Sana'a. For the next 300 days, Al-Guneid shared his time with American hostages, Houthi fighters, Al Qaeda militants and ordinary Yemenis caught up in the chaos of war.

Following his release, he wrote about his experience in exhaustive and gripping detail from exile in Canada. …

Prison Time in Sana'a tells the story of Dr Abdulkader Al-Guneid's harrowing experience inside jail in Yemen's capital shortly after it was taken over by Houthi rebels.

In his hometown of Taiz, Al-Guneid, a medical doctor, had been an outspoken figure on Yemeni politics for decades. In recent years, his social media and interviews were read around the world and attracted a global following from an audience anxious to hear an unbiased explanation of the underlying roots of the conflict. Ultimately, his activism placed him in the movement's crosshairs, leading to his abduction on 5 August 2015 and incarceration in an undisclosed Houthi jail in Sana'a. For the next 300 days, Al-Guneid shared his time with American hostages, Houthi fighters, Al Qaeda militants and ordinary Yemenis caught up in the chaos of war.

Following his release, he wrote about his experience in exhaustive and gripping detail from exile in Canada. Initially typing his entire account on his mobile phone, his story has since been distilled into a deeply personal account of his incarceration offering an extraordinarily candid perspective on the Yemen crisis from deep within Houthi-held territory.

1 eldono

Stephanie Jane recenzis Prison Time in Sana'a de Abdulkader Al-Guneid

An insightful memoir

4 steloj

Prison Time in Sana'a is the very first Yemeni-authored book I have read so I appreciated most of all that Al-Guneid devotes one of its three sections to an explanation of Yemen's current political situation, especially its fluid mosaic of alliances and allegiances. Understanding all this is a bewildering prospect for an outsider so Al-Guneid's clarity greatly helped me. I would echo the advice given in Stephen Day's introduction to start with the second section before reading Al-Guneid's actual prison memoir.

The memoir itself consists of Al-Guneid giving an overview of the events that led to his shocking abduction, and then his impressions of some of the men he encountered during his ten months in jail. I loved the way in which he was able to capture their personalities, making each one truly individual, whilst also portraying the grim conditions within each of the spartan - and often overcrowded - …

Prison Time in Sana'a is the very first Yemeni-authored book I have read so I appreciated most of all that Al-Guneid devotes one of its three sections to an explanation of Yemen's current political situation, especially its fluid mosaic of alliances and allegiances. Understanding all this is a bewildering prospect for an outsider so Al-Guneid's clarity greatly helped me. I would echo the advice given in Stephen Day's introduction to start with the second section before reading Al-Guneid's actual prison memoir.

The memoir itself consists of Al-Guneid giving an overview of the events that led to his shocking abduction, and then his impressions of some of the men he encountered during his ten months in jail. I loved the way in which he was able to capture their personalities, making each one truly individual, whilst also portraying the grim conditions within each of the spartan - and often overcrowded - cells. Al-Guneid's ability to maintain his self-reliance and dignity is moving and it must have taken significant willpower for him to revisit the experience in order to write this insightful memoir. I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to read it and, through his words, to understand more about the grave situation in Yemen.