Book Review
Against All Hope
A Memoir of Life in Castro’s Gulag
By Armando Valladares
New York, NY: Encounter Books, Revised Edition, 2001. 426pp.
Against All Hope
A Memoir of Life in Castro’s Gulag
By Armando Valladares
New York, NY: Encounter Books, Revised Edition, 2001. 426pp.
Armando Valladares, former political prisoner in Cuba and former ambassador for the United States to the United Nations Human Rights Commission, originally published Against All Hope in 1984. In 1961, at the age of twenty-three, Valladares was charged with ''acts of public destruction and sabotage” and labeled by the government as a “counter-revolutionary”. Valladares spent twenty-two years in various prisons throughout Cuba and was released in 1982 after international pressure and a personal appeal by former French President Francois Mitterand to the Castro regime[1].
Against All Hope is what the author describes as “my witness; an attempt to inform the world about the true criminal nature of the ongoing dictatorship of Fidel Castro” (xv). The book is divided into fifty-three chapters and is a detailed account of one man’s twenty-two year memoir through false imprisonment in communist Cuba.
For an up close and personal account that gives a story of courage, faith, and hope in the midst of a darkened and depraved humanity, I would recommend Against All Hope as a close companion. The author certainly paints with words to describe his personal memoirs. To learn more about Armando Valladares go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armando_Valladares or http://thehrf.org/. Valladares is Chairman of the Human Rights Foundation based in New York City.
Paul J. Christopher (243 words)
[1] http://www.thehrf.org/internationalcouncil.html#avalladres [Accessed May 20, 2009]
Against All Hope is what the author describes as “my witness; an attempt to inform the world about the true criminal nature of the ongoing dictatorship of Fidel Castro” (xv). The book is divided into fifty-three chapters and is a detailed account of one man’s twenty-two year memoir through false imprisonment in communist Cuba.
For an up close and personal account that gives a story of courage, faith, and hope in the midst of a darkened and depraved humanity, I would recommend Against All Hope as a close companion. The author certainly paints with words to describe his personal memoirs. To learn more about Armando Valladares go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armando_Valladares or http://thehrf.org/. Valladares is Chairman of the Human Rights Foundation based in New York City.
Paul J. Christopher (243 words)
[1] http://www.thehrf.org/internationalcouncil.html#avalladres [Accessed May 20, 2009]
One of my favorite books, June 23, 2004
ReplyDeleteBy J A W (Norman, OK United States)
Source: Amazon.com
"Beautiful in its stark, dark reprisal of life in a Cuban Gulag. Through all the grotesque trials and tribulation, Armando finds strength in the truth of his principles and in his God. He is a hero of mine, for I'm not sure I could withstand what he did. The beatings, the psych and chemical torture, the (...)pits, the knowledge that the family suffers because of your absence, the hunger strikes, for twenty years. Hundreds of anecdotes, mostly depressing (...), line the pages. This should be mandatory reading for the Danny Glovers of the world, who sickingly worship the ghoul Castro. Armando Valladares makes the world a better place, and we should all profit from learning about his life. It is a book that will stick w/ you, in its message of overcoming the darkest of the dark w/ the thin light of Heaven and freedom."