Footfalls in Memory - Hardcover

Waite, Terry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385488629 ISBN 13: 9780385488624

Publisher: Doubleday, 1997

Synopsis

For the first year of Terry Waite's solitary confinement in Beirut he was given nothing to read. During those days not only did he write his autobiography in his head, but he also attempted to remember the books, poems and prayers he had read during his life.
Eventually his guards mellowed and he was given books. He received a wide variety ranging from Herodotus to novels.
Now, Terry Waite has collected together selections from the books he remembered, the books he received and the books he wished he had been given. This selection provokes memories of childhood, travels and captivity as he vividly recalls personal stories and anecdotes and as he takes the reader down the corridors of his memory.
Footfalls in Memory, through the works of Solzhenitsyn, T.S. Eliot, William Styron, John Bunyan, Dostoevsky, Irina Ratushinskaya and many others, plus extracts from the Bible, and the Book of Common Prayer, gives another fascinating insight into a life illuminated by literature of all kinds.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

Waite, who was taken hostage in Beirut in 1987 while negotiating the release of other Western hostages, spent 1,760 days in captivity. For the first year, Waite, a great reader, was allowed no books. Gradually his captors relented, and Footfalls in Memory offers an anthology of brief excerpts drawn from books that provided solace for Waite during his confinement (ranging from Anna Sewell's Black Beauty to the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius and Herman Hesse's Magister Ludi). These are accompanied by his reflections on the ways in which books have influenced his life and the manner in which they helped him to survive his dreadful circumstances. Some of the books he includes were actually given to him during his captivity; others, he notes, he drew pleasure from by recollecting them during his imprisonment. In other hands such a work might seem a curious indulgence, but Waite's frankness and faith make this slender book surprisingly moving. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Library Journal:

In Taken on Trust (Harcourt, 1993), Waite wrote about his experiences as a hostage in Beirut, Lebanon, in the late 1980s. During his four years of solitary confinement, one of his few pleasures was reading the books his guards occasionally brought him, e.g., The Brothers Karamazov, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The Koran. Here he provides commentary and excerpts from the assortment of works he received, from those he remembered when he had nothing to read and from those he wished he had been given. Because each book filled a hunger for companionship and ideas, these selections have a significance for Waite that they do not necessarily have for others. They are generally brief, taken out of context, and thematically unrelated. The author's accompanying prefaces provide only short comments about the excerpts. A marginal purchase.?Ilse Heidmann, San Marcos, Tex.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0385488629
• ISBN 13: 9780385488624
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208