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35th out of 47 books
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13 voters
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Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number
The Americas, Ilan Stavans, Series Editor
Winner of a 1982 Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Selected by the New York Times for "Books of the Century"
With a new introduction by Ilan Stavans and a new foreword by Arthur Miller.
Author Biography: Jacobo Timerman (1923-1999) was born in the Ukraine, moved with his family to Argentina in 1928, and was deported to Israel
...morePaperback, 184 pages
Published
August 20th 2002
by University of Wisconsin Press
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Good grief, I could not finish this short book fast enough. I thought it would be about the experience of a prisoner under Argentina's dictatorship. Wrong. That becomes nearly a side story, allowing Timerman to expound upon anti-Semitism and Zionism.
Had the book actually been about being a prisoner, I would have found it much more rewarding. The passages that do deal with it are extremely well-written and both extremely disturbing and enlightening. The depiction of a dehumanizing sy...more
Had the book actually been about being a prisoner, I would have found it much more rewarding. The passages that do deal with it are extremely well-written and both extremely disturbing and enlightening. The depiction of a dehumanizing sy...more
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As the publisher of one of the few domestic newspapers to openly criticize the violence of both the left and the right in 1970s Argentina, Jacobo Timerman was a marked man. Detained without charge by the military junta in 1977 and held in clandestine concentration camps until his sudden release and deportation to Israel in 1979, Timerman was subjected to extensive physical torture as well as the psychological trauma of isolation cells, humiliation at the hands of his captors, and ongoing uncerta...more
This is unlike any other political prisoner's memoir I've ever read -- not that I've read many, perhaps five -- in that Timerman was an actual political activist and not just an ordinary person who got swept up in the ever-rising tide of persecution. The setting is Argentina but, as Timerman himself pointed out, his story could just as easily have taken place in Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany or any of scores of other countries.
I enjoyed this and it really made me think, but it's not ...more
I enjoyed this and it really made me think, but it's not ...more
This is one of the most compelling, riveting and painful stories on what happens when we refuse to understand that no one is above reality. For whichever reasons, and reasons he had, Mr. Timmerman thought that he was untouchable; that no harm would come to him when he dared to speak against them. How sad it was that Mr. Timmerman memories lacked the registry of what happened to President Salvador Allende just few years before; just next door in Chile.
With that been said, Mr. Timmerman ...more
With that been said, Mr. Timmerman ...more
This is by a modern-era Argentine journalist who found that his country was as murderously insane as nazi Germany, the only difference being that even less of the world cared this time around. He tries very hard but never figures out what it is that Jews have or do that makes people, politicians and military go crazy.
This important story is undermined by mediocre writing and a ridiculously poor editing. Between shocking scenes of torture and injustice and rambling accounts of Argentinean history, Timerman discusses politics and ideology is such a heavy-handed way as to make me question the veracity of the book.
This biography by a Jewish Argentinian journalist tells the story of how it feels to be a prisoner during the military regime in Argentina (1977). This book is powerful regardless of when and where this happened, since it reminds us about the universal human tendency to justify oppression, torture and homicide for what a regime perceives as self defense and actions taken for the greater good. Very evocative of the justifications for war provided by the current administration to invade Iraq and ...more
Manda The Panda
marked it as to-read
I have this book on my shelf and it always stares at me. Since I've never had a book that has been on my shelf longer than a month that's still classified in Unread.
AMAZING account of the Dirty War, very depressing, but WELL worth the read! Timerman's writing style was really engaging, loved it.
Un libro maravilloso y terrible a la vez. No apto para fanáticos de ninguna ala, color, religión, postura, etc.
Part essay and part narrative (no prisoner to form), a mind-breaking and heart-hurting account that addresses authoritarianism, anti-semitism and the Argentine soul with equal attention and convinces the reader of the common tragedy of those apparently diverse strands. And in his treatment of the political, Timerman doesn't neglect personal and psychological explorations from the interior of his cell, musing on madness, suicide and tenderness. Devastating and outstanding.
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Jacobo Timerman was born in the Ukraine, moved with his family to Argentina in 1928, and was deported to Israel in 1980. He returned to Argentina in 1984. Founder of two Argentine weekly newsmagazines in the 1960s and a commentator on radio and television, he was best known as the publisher and editor of the newspaper La Opinión from 1971 until his arrest in 1977. An outspoken champion of human ri...more
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“The entire affective world, constructed over the years with utmost difficulty, collapses with a kick in the father's genitals, a smack on the mother's face, an obscene insult to the sister, or the sexual violation of a daughter. Suddenly an entire culture based on familial love, devotion, the capacity for mutual sacrifice collapses. Nothing is possible in such a universe, and that is precisely what the torturers know… From my cell, I'd hear the whispered voices of children trying to learn what was happening to their parents, and I'd witness the efforts of daughters to win over a guard, to arouse a feeling of tenderness in him, to incite the hope of some lovely future relationship between them in order to learn what was happening to her mother, to get an orange sent to her, to get permission for her to go to the bathroom.”
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“Now they're really amused, and burst into laughter. Someone tries a variation while still clapping hands: 'Clipped prick… clipped prick.' Whereupon they begin alternating while clapping their hands: 'Jew… Clipped prick… Jew… Clipped prick.' It seems they're no longer angry, merely having a good time. I keep bouncing in the chair and moaning as the electric shocks penetrate [....]”
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