A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers

"When individuals are being tortured and everyone knows about it and no one seems able to do a thing to help," Lawrence Weschler writes, "primordial mysteries at the root of human community come under assault as well." Overthrowing oppressive regimes is not enough to resolve the crisis; the persecutors must also acknowledge what they have done. "True forgiveness is achieved in community.... It is history working itself out as grace, but it can only be accomplished in truth."

A Miracle, A Universe brings together two long nonfiction pieces, originally published in the New Yorker, which examine how citizens of Brazil and Uruguay have worked to "settle accounts" with their former torturers. Weschler uses historical background to supplement his powerful eyewitness reportage and interviews, bearing witness to those who seek to break through official denials of government atrocity. The efforts to build a democratic society in which people can have faith have rarely been portrayed with as much immediacy and insight as Weschler brings to these articles.