Pages: 250
Price: 24.95 US dollars or equivalent
To order:Not available from amazon.co.uk (even though the author is British) but can be ordered through the UK book trade with a little effort. Can be ordered from www.amazon.com .

It is often said that the greatest evil is 'man's inhumanity to man'. This book, a portrait of inhumanity on a hitherto undocumented scale, is a remarkable feat of journalistic endeavour and passion. It conveys a sense of both horror, in terms of what some people are forced to suffer, and yet also of hope and nobility in terms of how some survive their suffering and find ways to transcend it.

This remarkable book is high on my list of favourite journalism, alongside such masterpieces as Michael Herr's 'Dispatches' and Truman Capote's 'Hand-carved Coffins'. Kate Saunders is a highly respected figure in the movement which seeks to either free Tibet or, at the very least, achieve a productive dialogue between China and Tibet as regards the rights of the Tibetan people. As one part of this campaign, Kate went in search of 'stories from the Chinese Gulag' (the book's subtitle) and this relentlessly compelling account is the result.

In essence, the book records the experiences of those imprisoned for political reasons in Chinese logai (forced labour camps), and describes in unflinching detail the treatment they had to endure and the tortures they had to suffer. I cannot tell you it is easy reading. The writer who documents that which is horrific needs must sometimes horrify her readers. There are passages in this book which are as provocative and challenging as the events they present in unforgiving and unflinching detail. However, in collecting these accounts from Gulag survivors, Kate has preserved stories which testify to the strength, nobility and fortitude of the human spirit. In this sense the book is as much an inspiration and a witness to greatness as it is a record of the cruel and inhumane. It is hard to imagine any writer, any journalistic endeavour, any set of first-hand eyewitness testimonies that could match this book for its message of hope, dignity and courage.

The book is well-written and presented, and the author's deep knowledge of her subject makes her an expert and helpful guide through terrain that will be largely unfamiliar to most readers. Where she can usefully intervene to explain or clarify, she does so. Where it is best to simply let the survivors' stories speak for themselves, she does so, demonstrating admirable respect for the value to be found in these rare accounts of suffering and survival, and the lessons which can be drawn from them.

This is a book worth owning and reading even if Tibet means nothing to you. It is a highly impressive piece of front-line reportage which  illuminates the worst and best to be found deep within our own nature. On whichever level you care to take it - rallying cry, historical document, disinformation antidote, tribute to survivors - 'Eighteen Layers' is a triumph of journalistic research, endeavour and presentation. I recommend it unreservedly, and after you've read it I think you will too.

Please do not write asking me anything else about this item. The author didn't ask me to advertise it, this is not a paid-for advert, and I make no money out of this book. I don't wish to deal with 6 questions a day about something I make no money out of.

"It is one thing to digest the statistics of the number of men who died in labour camps from hunger and exhaustian, and quite another to know how a man dies oif hunger and exhaustion."
- from the author's introduction