Maurits Chabot - Across the Divide

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Maurits Chabot / Maurits Chabot – Across the Divide

Maurits Chabot – Across the Divide

Read our sample translation of Across the Divide

About the book

A Hutu and a Tutsi in Rwanda. An American police officer and a bank robber. An Israelian and a Palestinian girl. A neo-Nazi and a member of the queer community. These are friendships between people who, at first glance, seem destined to be enemies. In Across the Divide, Maurits Chabot takes his readers on a journalistic quest into the heart of Rwanda, along the checkpoints of the Israel-Palestine border, inside prisons of the US and art galleries in Oslo. While travelling through regions of conflicts and war, he investigates how people reconciled. Is there any limit to empathy? What does it take to have friendships emerge from dramatic conflicts? And what is there for others to learn from their stories of hope and resilience?

Excerpt from the preface of Across the Divide:

A mother in Rwanda befriended the man who murdered her nine-month-old daughter; a queer man in the US became friends with the neo-Nazi who left him for dead in an alley; a boy forged a bond with the man who kidnapped him, shot him in the head and then left him in a remote nature reserve. This is a book about unlikely friendships. About people who grew close despite extreme differences.

Praise for previous work:

A bright and passionate read. – Bas Heijne

Some books, every lawyer should read. Twelve years ago, that was Richard Süsskind’s The End of Lawyers. Now it is The Paper Palace of Maurits Chabot. – Erik Jan Bolsiu

Author

MAURITS CHABOT (b. 1992) is a historian and writes for newspaper De Volkskrant. His first book, The Paper Palace (2020), investigated how to reform justice in order to best serve victims. It argues that justice requires more than having a long juridical procedure confined to the simple question: right or wrong, victim or perpetrator. The Paper Palace was critically acclaimed and hailed as an absolute must-read.

Additional book information

Literary non-fiction
ISBN 9789400408623
Number of pages: 368
World rights: Thomas Rap
Price: €24,99
English sample translation available