Lost to the world A memoir of faith, family, and five years in terrorist captivity

Taseer, the son of assassinated Pakistani governor Salman Taseer, delivers a harrowing memoir about his abduction in Pakistan. In August 2011, Taseer was kidnapped by members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and held captive for five years, during which time he was repeatedly drugged with ketamine, beaten, and taken to the country outside Lahore, "to a place where men go to vanish, either by choice or by force." Taseer's torture, spearheaded by a sadistic ringleader known as Muhammad Ali, was videotaped to extract a ransom from his family, and as the months turned into years, Taseer contemplated suicide: "Death preoccupied my mind." But there were glimpses of hope; a guard allowed Taseer to listen to Manchester United soccer games on the radio and, though the guard was one of the tormenters, Taseer recognized how, with a small but important act, "He'd saved my life." Later, he was released by a different guard, but never found out why. Taseer's story is both chilling and infused with bravery and wisdom ("Hindsight can be cruel, especially if you are judge, jury, and executioner"). This testament to the resilience of the human spirit will inspire any reader. Agent: David McCormick, McCormick Literary. (Nov.)

A Pakistani businessman recounts his harsh captivity under the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. On Aug. 6, 2011, Taseer, the son of a prominent Pakistani media tycoon and politician who was assassinated in January of the same year, was abducted on his way to his office in Lahore. The kidnappers hid Taseer first in a safe house in Lahore, then spirited him away to Mir Ali, the border region of Northern Waziristan run by warlords. The Uzbek cell was headed by the brutal terrorist Muhammad Ali, who seemed to enjoy tormenting Taseer with twisted Quranic logic and torturing him without mercy while being filmed to extort ransom money from his family. Ali considered Taseer his "golden goose," and he made exorbitant demands that Taseer's family could not meet. The kidnappers kept the author in squalid conditions, without electricity, "chained and barely able to move," with nothing but a Quran to read. For the first time in his life, he notes, he began reading it "seriously," and he challenged his captor on his fraudulent interpretation of the text and his "great pious superiority." Taseer maintained his courage and sanity by thinking about his father, who withstood months of solitary confinement in prison in the 1980s. After drone strikes on the camp, Taseer was moved to Ali's home complex, and Ali's compassionate mother-in-law put a stop to his torture. When full-scale war broke out between the Taliban and the government, Ali shifted allegiances from the Taliban to the Islamic State group. During the ensuing chaos, Taseer was able to slip way, ending four and a half years in captivity. The fluid, often dramatic narrative is punctuated with raw, graphic details, but the author stops short of rendering deep political or religious insights. Nonetheless, Taseer's story alone makes the book a page-turner. A rare story of actual survival from brutal terrorists. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.