Waiting to Be Arrested at Night

''Essential reading'' Ai Weiwei'' *** ''Deeply courageous'' Philippe Sands

A Uyghur poet''s piercing memoir of life under the most coercive surveillance regime in history

If you took an Uber in Washington DC a few years ago, there''s a chance your driver was one of the greatest living Uyghur poets, and one of only a handful from his minority Muslim community to escape the genocide being visited upon his homeland in western China.

A successful filmmaker, innovative poet and prominent intellectual, Tahir Hamut Izgil had long been acquainted with state surveillance and violence, having spent three years in a labour camp on fabricated charges.

But in 2017, the Chinese government''s repression of its Uyghur citizens assumed a terrifying new intensity: critics were silenced; conversations became hushed; passports were confiscated; and Uyghurs were forced to provide DNA samples and biometric data.

As Izgil''s friends disappeared one by one,