Secret Depths
Anger simmers through Philippe Sands’s book, occasionally sending the lid of the narrative flying, but never for long. The story returns to containment within a carefully conducted forensic enquiry in what has become an engrossing book.
It offers, as Rebecca Abrams wrote in the FT, ‘a timely reminder that crimes against humanity don’t occur only at the level of states and governments. They take place also in the more secret and less fathomable depths of people’s hearts and minds.’
It shows furthermore the lengths to which people may go to redeem the memory of those they love (and thus their sense of self), the stakes of collusion with injustice, the perversions that occur when high, even transcendent, ideals are submitted to politicking. Sands provides us with something of a universal parable, full of relevance for the present time.
