Fear no evil : the classic memoir of one man's triumph over a police state

Temperamentally and intellectually, Natan Sharansky is a man very much like many of us—which makes this account of his arrest on political grounds, his trial, and ten years' imprisonment in the Orwellian universe of the Soviet gulag particularly vivid and resonant. Since Fear No Evil was originally published in 1988, the Soviet government that imprisoned Sharansky has collapsed. Sharansky has become an important national leader in Israel—and serves as Israel's diplomatic liaison to the former Soviet Union! New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief Serge Schmemann reflects on those monumental events, and on Sharansky's extraordinary life in the decades since his arrest, in a new introduction to this edition. But the truths Sharansky learned in his jail cell and sets forth in this book have timeless importance so long as rulers anywhere on earth still supress their own peoples. For anyone with an interest in human rights—and anyone with an appreciation for the resilience of the human spirit—he illuminates the weapons with which the powerless can humble the powerful: physical courage, an untiring sense of humor, a bountiful imagination, and the conviction that "Nothing they do can humiliate me. I alone can humiliate myself." In this epock-making book, the Jewish dissident describes the ordeal of his trial and imprisonment in the Soviet Gulag. A new preface evaluates the era of Gorbachev. Arrested by the Soviet government in 1977, Natan Sharansky's uncompromising struggle against his captors during the nine years of his imprisonment served as a rallying cry to human rights activists all over the world. His release in 1986 was a testament not only to his personal courage and commitment to freedom, but to the principle that one man can make a difference -- back cover The prison memoirs of the Soviet dissident and Jewish activist relate the harrowing events of his nine years in KGB custody, from interrogation to release.