GUANTANAMO DIARY

This diary, the first to be published by a detainee still in Guantanamo, makes for an unusual listening experience. Author Mohamedou Ould Slahi has been imprisoned in the controversial detention facility since 2002. Narrator Peter Ganim's accent enables the listener to imagine the Mauritanian author himself telling his story and helps to separate the author's passages from the editor's speculative and explanatory footnotes. Ganim narrates the latter in his natural American-accented voice. A large amount of material that was evidently redacted by the U.S. Government prior to the book's publication is denoted by rote recitations of the word "redacted' in a woman's voice. While this repetition emphasizes the amount of text that was eliminated, it ultimately proves to be a distraction from what remains. S.E.G. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine [Published: APRIL 2015]