Promotional Information

A uniquely personal exploration of the origins of international law, centring on the Nuremberg Trials, the city of Lviv and a secret family history

About the Author

Philippe Sands is Professor of Public Understanding of Law at UCL, visiting professor at Harvard Law School and a practising barrister at 11 KBW. He has been involved in many significant international cases in recent years, including Pinochet, Congo, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Iraq, Guantanamo, Chagos and the Rohingya. He is the author of Lawless World, Torture Team, East West Street (winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-fiction) and Sunday Times bestsellers The Ratline and The Last Colony. He has served as President of English PEN and is a member of the board of the Hay Festival.

Reviews

A monumental achievement: profoundly personal, told with love, anger and great precisionEngrossing . . . Sands has written a remarkable and enjoyable book, deftly weaving his own family history into a lively account of the travails of the early campaigners for international human rights law - LITERARY REVIEWA vivid and readable contribution, part memoir, part documentary, to the history debate ... Much of the most compelling material in this book is personal ... Moving and powerful - FINANCIAL TIMESIn a triumph of astonishing research, Sands has brilliantly woven together several family stories which lead to the great denouement at the Nuremberg tribunal. No novel could possibly match such an important work of truthA narrative to my knowledge unprecedented . . . We have in Sands's EAST WEST STREET a machine of power and beauty that should not be ignored by anyone - NEW YORK TIMESDazzling, shatttering. East West Street is one of the most extraordinary books that I have ever read.