Prisoner of Pinochet
My Year in a Chilean Concentration Camp

Sergio Bitar (Author), Erin Goodman (Translated by)

9780299313708

Hardback, published 12 December 2017

176 pages, 16 black & white illustrations, 1 map
22.9 x 15.2 x 1 cm, 0.4 kg

Democracy is fragile, and only fully appreciated when it is lost. Sergio Bitar, now one of the most prominent political leaders in Chile, recounts the story of the 1973 military coup and his imprisonment in a direct, unsentimental style that sharply highlights the dramatic events he narrates."" - Isabel Allende Llona

""A compelling account, a best seller in Chile ... and an important contribution to the country's understanding of itself."" - Foreign Affairs

September 11, 1973: Chilean military forces under General Augusto Pinochet overthrew the elected government of President Salvador Allende, bombing the presidential palace with the president inside. Minister of Mining Sergio Bitar was forcibly detained along with other members of the Allende cabinet and confined on bleak, frigid Dawson Island in the Magellan Straits.

Prisoner of Pinochet is the gripping first-person chronicle of Bitar's year as a political prisoner before being expelled from Chile; a poignant narrative of men held captive together in a labor camp under harsh conditions, only able to guess at their eventual fate; and an insightful memoir of the momentous events of the early 1970s that led to seventeen years of bloody authoritarian rule in Chile. Available in English for the first time, this edition includes maps and photos from the 1970s and contextual notes by historian Peter Winn.