Waiting to Be Arrested at Night

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

''Essential reading''
AI WEIWEI, author of 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows

''Deserves to be read widely''
FINANCIAL TIMES

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