Don’t Forget Us Here

This “searing” (The New York Times) memoir of an innocent man detained at Guantánamo Bay for fifteen years tells a story of humanity in the unlikeliest of places, alongside an unprecedented look at life at Guantánamo.

• “Searing… a starkly human dispatch from the messy and often unheard receiving end of the war on terror.”
  The New York Times
• "In this landmark work, Mansoor Adayfi gives us a guided tour through the nightmarish landscape of Guantánamo. He tells a tale of both casual cruelty and organized sadism that should make every American politician redden with shame. But this memoir offers much more than just a gruesome portrait of a bureaucracy gone berserk, for it describes the fierce resistance and ultimate redemption of an innocent Yemeni man consigned to a hellish prison. Let us hope that Don't Forget Us Here will spark a long overdue reckoning with the horrors of Guantánamo and its many victims."
  Ron Chernow, former president of PEN America and bestselling author of Grant and Hamilton
• "This is a wholly enthralling, relentlessly enraging, and unexpectedly funny book about one man caught in the absurdist world of the War on Terror. With his mordant wit and astonishing perseverance, Mansoor is impossible not to root for. This is a contemporary Unbroken with vital lessons for the American military-intelligence complex, exposing how an ostensibly moral nation becomes a state sponsor of torture."
  Dave Eggers, Pulitzer Prize finalist and winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize
• "An incredible story! I am grateful to this joyously heartbreaking book for reminding me of what it means to be not just human, but humane."
   
  Azar Nafisi, bestselling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran
• “It took courage to live his life; it took more courage yet to write his story.  It takes courage to read it, too, but that is amply rewarded by the author’s generosity of spirit, which informs every word of his memoir. Only a few books change history; this might be one of them. Let us hope so.”
  Andrew Solomon, National Book Award-winning author of The Noonday Demon
• “Amazing book! & will be an eye-opener for many.”
  Margaret Atwood (from twitter)
• "Powerful…An important record of prisoner mistreatment as a national reckoning over Guantánamo continues to loom."
  Kirkus (starred review)
• "This unvarnished memoir will grip readers and anger them; a decisive contribution to the continuing reappraisal of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."
  Library Journal
• "Searing...This poignant testament strikes a devastating chord."
  Publishers Weekly
• "Mansoor’s plight is unfathomable, but his strength most certainly is enviable. His powerful, unforgettable story is a must read in every way."
  Booklist
• "A remarkable feat of storytelling...[an] exceptionally moving memoir."
  Shelf Awareness
• "[Adayfi is] a charming, exuberant soul, and his humor and flights of fancy come through in even the book’s most hard-to-read moments."
  The Intercept
• "A profoundly moving and immensely important tribute to the intelligence, resilience, and humanity with which its author, Mansoor Adayfi, survived fourteen years as a detainee in the notorious Guantanamo prison camp."
  Francine Prose, bestselling author of Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932
• "Both a record of what was done to detainees and a triumphant boast about how they survived. We should read it to bear witness to what was done in our name — and to gain inspiration for what we need to do to ensure that this injustice never happens again."
  Los Angeles Review of Books
• "After years of hearing and reading only the ‘official’ version of his story, as told by his captors, at last Mansoor himself speaks. Speaking at all after such experiences, which included 14 years of the most serious human rights violations and daily humiliations designed to break the human spirit, is a victory. Speaking as Mansoor does here, of the struggle of Guantánamo's prisoners to assert their humanity, turns the official story about these men on its head, and shows Guantánamo for what it is: a terrible shame and a pointless failure."
  Mohamedou Ould Slahi, bestselling author of Guantánamo Diary
• "A window of stunning humanity into a place meant to be kept forever secret."
   
   
  Melissa Fleming, UN Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications and author of A Hope More Powerful than the Sea
• "A blistering, eloquent indictment of Guantánamo. Mansoor Adayfi vividly describes the abuses committed there and he writes powerfully about the decade and half he spent there."
  Peter Bergen, bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden and The Longest War
• "Don’t Forget Us Here may be one of the most shocking books you’ll ever read, but not for the reasons you might expect. What’s most shocking about this extraordinary book is Adayfi’s enormous capacity to resist his captors with uncommon creativity, dignity, and even humor."
  Moustafa Bayoumi, author of How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America
• “A riveting, illuminating account of Guantánamo from a Muslim perspective.”
  Jonathan Hansen, author of Guantánamo: An American History