Eyecandy

Guantánamo for kids

Anna Perera’s book Guantánamo Boy is the fictional account of a teenager from the UK who is abducted from his relatives’ house in Karachi and sent to the detention camp.

It sounds unlikely but, according to Perera, it is well-established that juveniles have been held at Guantánamo, although the numbers are disputed. Reprieve, the charity for prisoners from death row to Guantánamo, has recorded that 22 under-16s have been held at the camp. The youngest juvenile still in custody is Mohammed el Gharani, who was 14 when picked up in a random raid on a mosque by Pakistani bounty-hunters and “sold” to the American authorities for $5,000.

It was stories like these that Guantánamo Boy is based on, although the book itself emerged out of just one line delivered by the human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith at a benefit event for Reprieve in 2006.

“At that gig Clive Stafford Smith simply said ‘children are also held in Guantánamo Bay’ and that one statement inspired this novel,” says Perera.

The book is available at Amazon UK.

The Book of Comparisons

The Diagram Group’s Book of Comparisons uses the size of familiar objects and experiences—a pencil, the capacity of a taxi, a walk around the block—to help us comprehend the size of less familiar objects and experiences—a giraffe, the capacity of a ship, a run around Manhattan. It’s an imperfect book but wonderfully illustrated and worth checking out.