Description
Partly inspired by true events, Joost Hiltermann’s The Resurrected traces the lives of two young Kurdish survivors of Saddam Hussein’s 1988 Anfal campaign as they escape Iraq and attempt to rebuild their lives in America.
Blending testimony, fiction and historical memory, the novel explores genocide, exile, trauma and the enduring weight of the past. In this special conversation, Hiltermann reflects on the relationship between literature and historical violence, the complexities of survival and diaspora, and the ways memory continues to shape lives long after conflict ends.
A powerful exploration of displacement, identity and the human struggle to live beyond catastrophe.
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About the Chair
Professor Eugene Rogan
Eugene Rogan teaches the modern history of the Middle East at the University of Oxford, where he serves as Director of the Middle East Centre. He is author of The Arabs: A History (Penguin, 2009, 2017), The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East (Penguin, 2015), and The Damascus Events: The 1860 Massacre and the End of the Old Ottoman Order. His works have been published in 19 languages.
About the Author
Joost Hiltermann
Joost Hiltermann is mainly a nonfiction writer who decided to try his hand at fictionalising a true story. He has been with the International Crisis Group for the past 23 years, and spent a decade before that at Human Rights Watch. During that time, he documented Saddam Hussein’s genocidal counter-insurgency Anfal campaign against Iraqi Kurds – the context of “The Resurrected”. Previously, he published two books and contributed articles to The New York Review of Books and London Review of Books, among others. He worked for the Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq in the Israeli-occupied for five years in the 1980s.
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