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"When individuals are being tortured and everyone knows about it and no one seems able to do a thing to help," Lawrence Weschler writes, "primordial mysteries at the root of human community come under assault as well." Overthrowing oppressive regimes is not enough to resolve the crisis; the persecutors must also acknowledge what they have done. "True forgiveness is achieved in community.... It is history working itself out as grace, but it can only be accomplished in truth."
A Miracle, A Universe brings together two long nonfiction pieces, originally published in the New Yorker, which examine how citizens of Brazil and Uruguay have worked to "settle accounts" with their former torturers. Weschler uses historical background to supplement his powerful eyewitness reportage and interviews, bearing witness to those who seek to break through official denials of government atrocity. The efforts to build a democratic society in which people can have faith have rarely been portrayed with as much immediacy and insight as Weschler brings to these articles.
From Publishers Weekly
After the demise of Brazil's repressive military regime, a group of ex-prisoners, all former torture victims, banded together to document their captors' atrocities--arbitrary arrests and "disappearances," the torture of thousands, murders. Their 1985 book, which holds the U.S. responsible for helping to create Brazil's dictatorship, became a bestseller in that country. In the first half of his dispassionate report, New Yorker staff writer Wechsler records his conversations with the survivors. Brazil's one-time torturers, he notes, have risen to positions of power. In the book's second half, he describes Uruguay's massive but unsuccessful petition campaign--spearheaded by ex-torture victims and human rights activists--to bring to justice the toppled Uruguayan military regime's butchers. Though Wechsler underestimates the U.S. role in reversing Uruguay's democracy, he points out that the State Department issued bland assurances that the police state in Uruguay was a temporary response to an emergency situation. Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Systematic political torture is a relatively recent phenomenon in world politics. Weschler, a New Yorker staff writer, chronicles an era of torture in Brazil and Uruguay. He bases his Brazilian account on over one million pages of archives kept by the military, which includes accounts by survivors. He also tells the story of the not-wholly successful efforts to bring Uruguayan officials to justice. Individual accounts of torture, however, are only a small part of the book; instead, Weschler recounts the story of whole societies as victims. Previously excerpted in a five-part series in The New Yorker , this is a compelling book that draws attention to a political truth that is too easily avoided. Highly recommended for public and university libraries.- Andrea Bonnicksen, Eastern Illinois Univ., CharlestonCopyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
During the past fifteen years, one of the most vexing issues facing fledgling transitional democracies around the world--from South Africa to Eastern Europe, from Cambodia to Bosnia--has been what to do about the still-toxic security apparatuses left over from the previous regime. In this now-classic and profoundly influential study, the New Yorker's Lawrence Weschler probes these dilemmas across two gripping narratives (set in Brazil and Uruguay, among the first places to face such concerns), true-life thrillers in which torture victims, faced with the paralysis of the new regime, themselves band together to settle accounts with their former tormentors.
"Disturbing and often enthralling."--New York Times Book Review
"Extraordinarily moving. . . . Weschler writes brilliantly."--Newsday
"Implausible, intricate and dazzling."--Times Literary Supplement
"As Weschler's interviewees told their tales, I paced agitatedly, choked back tears. . . . Weschler narrates these two episodes with skill and tact. . . . An inspiring book."--George Scialabba, Los Angeles Weekly
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