Denial : A Memoir
Author(s): Jessica Stern
“Denial is one of the most important books I have read in a decade....Brave, life-changing, and gripping as a thriller….A tour de force.”
—Naomi Wolf
One of the world’s foremost experts on terrorism and post-traumatic stress disorder, Jessica Stern has subtitled her book Denial, “A Memoir of Terror.” A brave and astonishingly frank examination of her own unsolved rape at the age of fifteen, Denial investigates how the rape and its aftermath came to shape Stern’s future and her work. The author of the New York Times Notable Book Terror in the Name of God, Jessica Stern brilliantly explores the nature of evil in an extraordinary volume that Louise Richardson, author of What Terrorists Want, calls, “Memorable, powerful and deeply courageous…a riveting read.”
Review(s):
“[A] stunningly brave book.”
“This month’s must-read nonfiction: terrorism expert Jessica Stern’s DENIAL: A Memoir of Terror which opens the decades-old file of a crime committed against Stern as a teen, launching her on a gutsy investigation into the ways in which trauma is perpetuated.”
“DENIAL [is] a profound human document… it is hot to the touch in ways that are both memorable and disturbing.”
“[Stern’s] commitment to introspection makes for a book that is memorably searing…”
“[Denial is a] powerfully constructed memoir … [an] incandescently honest book…”
“[Stern’s rapist] whose chaotic life and whose own probable victimization Stern reconstructs, caused her lifelong anguish. She doesn’t simply tell us so but shows us in shattered, artfully repetitive narration.”
“…An intense and honest examination…DENIAL is a touching portrait of how the after affects of trauma can influence the personal and professional life of its victim.”
“An extraordinary memoir conveys Stern’s process of denial, dissociation, and healing in her dawning realization of intolerable truths.”
“a compelling investigation into her own life, the life of the serial rapist who committed at least 44 similar crimes and the way trauma affects everyone it touches, sometimes in surprisingly positive ways.”
“In this skillfully wrought, powerful study, a terrorism expert, national security adviser, and lecturer at Harvard, returns to a definitive episode of terror in her own early life and traces its grim, damaging ramifications… Stern’s work is a strong, clear-eyed, elucidating study of the profound reverberations of trauma.”
ISBN: 9780061626661