A launch event for Victoria Brittain’s forthcoming book, Shadow Lives: The Forgotten Women of the War on Terror (Pluto, 2013), has been confirmed for Tuesday, 26th February in the London Review Bookshop.

In Shadow Lives Victoria Brittain explores a hidden dimension of the ‘9/11 wars’ – the impact on the wives and families of the men imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay and under house arrest in Britain and the US. Beatrix Campbell has written ‘This is a book to make you gasp, weep, shout, but above all a book to admire: the lovely writing, the complexities made clear, the everyday heroism of survivors. It is a terrible story, beautifully told.’

Victoria Brittain, described by John Pilger as ‘one of the greatest reporters’, will be at the shop to talk about her book with the award-winning human rights lawyer Louise Christian, who has acted on behalf of several Guantanamo detainees. They will tell the horrifying stories of several of the families affected by extra-judicial detention, and discuss the wider implications of policies which flout the rule of law, breach fundamental human rights, and run counter to the basic principles of human decency.

Tickets for the event cost £7 and can be purchased through the London Review Bookshop’s website, here.

It promises to be an engaging discussion that is not to be missed. We advise booking your place early, and we’ll be posting more about this event closer to the time.

Shadow Lives

The Forgotten Women of the War on Terror

Victoria Brittain. Foreword by John Berger. Afterword by Marina Warner

“Thanks in no small measure to Victoria Brittain’s remarkable work, we should all have at least some sense of the horrifying events of which Guantanamo is a symbol. Here Brittain adds another crucial dimension to the shameful record, with a searching, sensitive, and wrenching account of the ordeal of the women left behind, their torment, their endurance and courage, their triumphs over the cruel “extension of prison to home.” And not least, a revealing picture of what we have allowed ourselves to become. ”    – Noam Chomsky

“This is a window into an invisible world…a reminder that abandoning normal legal standards has serious consequences for the Rule of Law.” – Helena Kennedy, QC


The book can be purchased at Pluto Books – http://www.plutobooks.com/display.asp?%20K=9780745333267&st1=shadow%2Blives&sf1=kword_index%2Cpublisher&sort=sort_pluto&m=1&dc=2