The Meadow: Kashmir 1995 – Where the Terror Began - Hardcover

Levy, Adrian; Scott-Clark, Cathy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 000736816X ISBN 13: 9780007368167

Publisher: HarperPress, 2012

Synopsis

The Kashmir Kidnapping that changed the face of modern terrorism.

In July 1995, ten Western backpackers take a trip of a lifetime. hey have come in search of many things – nirvana, exhilaration, a sense of self. But over the course of the next week, their holidays take a terrifying turn when they become entangled in a nail-biting hostage drama that will suck them into an alien world of jihad and Islamic fundamentalism. In the months that follow, their fates will become caught-up in a bloody struggle between India and Pakistan, fought out in the airless heights of Kashmir.

With the world looking on, four of the captured travellers will vanish off the face of the earth, never to be seen again, creating one of the region’s great mysteries.

Written with access to diaries, letters, unprocessed film and personal recollections from those enmeshed in the drama, drawing on classified police reports and secret tape recordings of Indian government negotiations, as well as interviews with the jihadis themselves and excerpts from their journals, Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark’s book is a real-life thriller, a startling but compelling story told from the perspective of all involved.

The Meadow charts how the fates of two groups of young men from different hemispheres became inextricably entwined on the mountain trails they followed. It tells of the terrifying escape of one hostage, the heart-rending secret letters another wrote on birch bark and hid in his clothing as he contemplated his situation, and how, with a brutal beheading, the kidnappers took an irreversible step into the abyss.

Packed with explosive revelations, The Meadow provides the first definitive answers as to what happened to the missing backpackers, revealing how the kidnapping of July 1995 changed the face of modern jihad, its architects going on to sow the seeds of a cold-hearted war against the West.

About this title

Review:

‘The definitive end to the story, which has remained unresolved for seventeen years...Levy and Scott-Clark have dared to follow the pitiless logic of a very dirty war, and have shown where it can lead...a gripping and often emotional read’ Literary Review

‘A meticulous account ... Like a real-life version of The Beach by Alex Garland’ Sunday Telegraph

‘A gripping human story. ‘The Meadow’ is as long as it is fascinating, minutely re-enacting a horrifying moment that was to send out ripples for decades to come’ Independent

‘Comprehensive and laced with telling detail... A bravura piece of reporting, and an insight into the dark heart of modern terrorism’ Sunday Times

About the Author:

Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott Clark are internationally renowned and award winning investigative journalists who worked as staff writers and foreign correspondents for The Sunday Times before joining the Guardian. Their first book, Stone of Heaven (2001) was named by the New York Times as a book of the year. The Amber Room (2004) was a finalist in the Borders’ Original Voices US book awards, becoming a national best seller there. Their third book, Deception (2007) was a Washington Post ‘pick of the year’, and a finalist in the Royal United Services Institute, Duke of Westminster’s Medal for military literature. They won the One World Media award for foreign reporting in 2005 and were selected as One World Media Journalists of the Year in 2009. They have produced several television documentaries, most recently City of Fear, a film for Channel 4’s Dispatches (2010). They live in London and in France.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperPress
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 000736816X
• ISBN 13: 9780007368167
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 528