American Mother - Hardcover

McCann, Colum; Foley, Diane

Hardcover

ISBN 13: 9798985882452

Verlag: Etruscan Press, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

"One of the best books I've read in many, many years, if not in my life."--Anderson Cooper Featured on MSNBC's Morning Joe What does a mother say to the person responsible for kidnapping, torturing, and murdering her son? National Book Award-winning author Colum McCann channels Diane Foley's voice as she tells her story, as the mother of American journalist Jim Foley - in search of answers, beyond justice, found through dogged, empathetic, spiritual enquiry. In late 2021, Diane Foley sat at a table across from her son's killer, Alexanda Kotey, a member of the ISIS group known as "The Beatles" who plead guilty to the kidnapping, torture, and murder of her son seven years before. Kotey was about to go serve life imprisonment and this was Diane's chance to talk to the man who had been involved with brutally taking her son's last breath. What would she say to his killer? What would he reveal to her? Might she even be able to summon forgiveness for him? So begins American Mother-- which reads alternately like a thriller, a biography, a mystery, a memoir, and a literary examination of grace. Diane looks back on the early days when Jim was a child and his journey to journalism, and the killing fields of the world where he reports with indefatigable determination and insight on the plight of those caught up in the agonies of war. She guides us through her family history and the difficulties they faced when Jim was captured. And she also charts the tenacity it takes to turn her grief into grace as she seeks to give voice to those who are still being kidnapped and wrongfully detained around the world. Few journeys are more worthy than this and, in this astonishing book, we are all invited to celebrate the lives of those who are never, in the end, gone.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Colum McCann has seven novels and three collections of short stories have been published in over forty languages and received some of the world's most prestigious literary awards and honors, including the National Book Award for his novel Let the Great World Spin in 2013. His novel TransAtlantic was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2013, and his most recent novel, Apeirogon, also longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, is an international best-seller on four continents.

Diane M. Foley co-founded the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation in the weeks after her son, a freelance journalist, was beheaded by members of ISIS in the Syrian Desert in 2014. Inspired by the life, work, and moral courage of her son, Diane has worked with Congress and every presidential administration since, catalyzing action, research, and policy to win freedom for all US Nationals wrongfully detained or held hostage abroad.

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In the room, the clocks tick, unseen. 

It has been a day of shadows and redirection, revelation and lies. Diane gets the vague sense that Kotey — with his confidence and his silence — might think himself to be the smartest person in the room. He is intelligent yes, but it’s an intelligence that needs to wear a disguise. And besides, the smartest person in the room is the one who knows she, or he, is never the smartest at all: herein lies the contradiction. She wonders now if he has just said exactly the things she wanted to hear? She knows herself to be naïve at times: she admits this to herself. Yes, it is true, she has often been far too open to people in the past. She has been stung. Government officials who have deceived her. Pretenders from the FBI. Misdirection from the State Department and White House. Politicians. Negotiators. Informers. Conmen. And, perhaps now, Kotey. But she also knows that the naivety is necessary to cultivate something deeper. She wants to remain open to the world. Compassion, Lord. And mercy. And patience. There will be one more session tomorrow. Perhaps they will achieve something more than this intimate stand-off . But then again, perhaps nothing. She pulls back her chair and thanks him. It is dangerous, she knows, to thank him, her son’s murderer. But she must do it anyway. Perhaps it’s only politeness. Perhaps it’s something more. 

In another life,” she says, “you and Jim might have been friends.”

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Etruscan Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 13: 9798985882452
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 256
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland