Rights sold
- Links Verlag (Germany)
- Iperoborea (Italy)
Read a sample translation of A word a word
About the book
In this book Frank Westerman tests the strength of the free word under the pressure of present-day attacks since Charlie Hebdo. He mixes with terrorism experts in Paris and drinks mint tea with a former train hijacker who has become a poet. To get a sense of what language can do against terror, Frank Westerman goes a step further by subjecting himself to a hijacking exercise in a Boeing 747 at Schiphol Airport and by training as a hostage negotiator in a police training village. What can the word achieve against the bullet?
As a child Frank Westerman experienced the Moluccan train hijacking from close proximity and as a correspondent he witnessed the Chechen terror in Russia. Starting out from these intense experiences he takes the reader with him through a series of high-profile hostage dramas from Bovensmilde to Beslan, all of them inspired by the bible or the Koran.