Since she went to Belsen in 1945, to work with survivors of the camp at the age of nineteen, Helen Bamber's life has been devoted to working with people who have suffered the most appalling physical and psychological damage at the hands of others. From survivors of the holocaust and of the Burma railroad, through the victims of South African, Argentinian, Iraqi, Iranian and Israeli regimes, she has worked to heal those who have suffered at the hands of political and military torturers. Neil Belton will use her story as the basis to examine the resurrection of torture as an instrument of political power in our century, the experiences of sufferers, in a book that will be both a powerful and harrowing examination of the darkest sides of humanity, and of the character of one extraordinary, good and complex human being.

Author Biography

Neil Belton was born in Dublin and brought up in the suburb of Clontarf. He is an Editorial Director at Faber & Faber and the author of The Good Listener: Helen Bamber, A Life Against Cruelty, which won the Irish Times prize in 1999.