"Bok takes the Sudanese government and world leaders to task for their indifference to his people's suffering. Although he at first was an unwilling ambassador, he has become a leading voice for the antislavery movement in the United States."—Detroit News and Free Press

"A touching modern-day slave narrative that is more than just an account of [Bok's] journey from childhood to manhood under the worst of circumstances . . . Pages of historical details are eye-opening and provide a glimpse into what can happen when religion is the impetus in the governing of a nation . . . An informative, inspiring read."—The Boston Globe

"The letters exchanged between Amal and Odelia are profoundly moving. The conflict between Jews and Arabs has been described in countless books and argued in unending polemics, but here, in the letters between these two eighteen-year-old women, an Arab and a Jew, is the heartbreaking essence of the quarrel. It is the battle of two rights; the Palestinians who have been made into semi-strangers in their homeland and the Jews who have no other place which is central to their history, and which is always ready to receive Jews in flights from persecution. In these letters (an idea brilliantly conceived and carried through by Sylke Tempel) Amal and Odelia educate each other. The conclude together that their two peoples cannot continue to make war. They must agree that the are destined, perhaps even condemned, to live together in the land, as first in two separate states and ultimately, in growing comradeship. This is the book for anyone who wants to feel and understand the emotions on both sides. It will become a classic."—Arthur Hertzberg, author of A Jew in America: My Life and a People's Struggle for Identity