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An Inquiry into the Sons and Daughters of Dictators
Encounter Books
October 2015
On Sale: September 22, 2015
320 pages
ISBN: 1594038155
EAN: 9781594038150
Kindle: B0140EFIXA
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction Biography
What’s it like to be the son or daughter of a dictator? A
monster on the Stalin level? What’s it like to bear a name
synonymous with oppression, terror, and evil? Jay Nordlinger set out to answer that question, and does so
in this book. He surveys 20 dictators in all. They are the
worst of the worst: Stalin, Mao, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Saddam
Hussein, and so on. The book is not about them, really,
though of course they figure in it. It’s about their children. Some of them are absolute loyalists. They admire, revere, or
worship their father. Some of them actually succeed their
father as dictator—as in North Korea, Syria, and Haiti. Some
of them have doubts. A couple of them become full-blown
dissenters, even defectors. A few of the daughters have the
experience of having their husband killed by their father.
Most of these children are rocked by war, prison, exile, or
other upheaval. Obviously, the children have things in common. But they are
also individuals, making of life what they can. The main
thing they have in common is this: They have been dealt a
very, very unusual hand. What would you do, if you were the offspring of an
infamous dictator, who lords it over your country? An early reader of this book said, “There’s an opera on
every page”: a drama, a tragedy (or even a comedy). Another
reader said he had read the chapter on Bokassa “with my eyes
on stalks.” Meet these characters for yourself. Marvel, shudder, and ponder.
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