An Evil Cradling - Brian Keenan

The brutality of man against man is the one thing that sets us apart from the rest of the animal world. The insane cruelty that can grip, and devour a person beyond reason makes man the most dangerous thing to walk this beautiful planet. It was into the hands of such men that Brian Keenan, an Irish teacher, found himself when on his way to work at the English University of Beirut. What was to follow for Brian, would have made a lesser man insane, I am sure that if it were me who had been taken I would have been dead by now. Brian Keenan was raised in an Ireland full of troubles, sectarian values were abound and he was himself troubled by ...  Read the complete review

This is one of the most extraordinary books I’ve ever read – made all the more striking by the fact that every word of it is true. In 1985, a teacher from Belfast named Brian Keenan was bundled into a car as he left for work one morning. Belfast is a notoriously troubled place; but this wasn’t Ireland, this was Beirut, and Keenan had been taken hostage by the Islamic Jihad, a fundamentalist Shi’ite group. He remained their captive for the next four and a half years. During that time he had no contact with the outside world, and often saw no-one other than his kidnappers. On release, both he and fellow hostage John McCarthy wrote about their ...  Read the complete review