Today, in the words of Human Rights Foundation (HRF) Board Chairman Garry Kasparov, we are witnessing “the frontline of the total war between freedom and tyranny.”
Now, more than ever, is the time to join the struggle for freedom. Learn of pressing human rights issues, listen to the stories of brave activists and dissidents, and study the strategies to take down tyranny. You can do this one page at a time.
From the ascension of Russia’s Vladimir Putin to the fight for modern freedom in Saudi Arabia to one’s defection from North Korea, here are HRF’s suggested reads for 2023.
BOOK
Blueprint for Revolution: How to Use Rice Pudding, Lego Men, and Other Nonviolent Techniques to Galvanize Communities, Overthrow Dictators, or Simply Change the World
Srdja Popovic
Former Oslo Freedom Forum (OFF) Speaker
Popovic provides an urgent and accessible handbook for peaceful protesters, activists, and community organizers — anyone trying to defend their rights, hold their government accountable, or change the world.
Add Your Heading Text Here
BOOK
The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag
Kang Chol-hwan
Former OFF speaker
Kang Chol-hwan provides his unassailable firsthand experience as a survivor of a North Korean “re-education” camp, documenting the extreme conditions in these gulags and giving eyewitness proof to the abuses perpetrated by the regime.
Add Your Heading Text Here
BOOK
Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman's Awakening
Manal al-Sharif
Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent Laureate
A ferociously intimate memoir by a devout woman from a modest Saudi family who became the unexpected leader of a courageous movement to support women’s right to drive.
Add Your Heading Text Here
BOOK
Prisoner of Tehran: One Woman's Story of Survival Inside an Iranian Prison
Marina Nemat
HRF International Council Member
Nemat tells the heart-pounding story of her life of incarceration as a young girl in Iran during the early days of Ayatollah Khomeini’s brutal Islamic Revolution.
Add Your Heading Text Here
BOOK
In the Name of Honor: A Memoir
Mukhtar Mai
Former OFF speaker
Mai, a Pakistani woman raped by a local clan, describes her harrowing experience and how she has since become an agent for change and a beacon of hope for oppressed women around the world.
Add Your Heading Text Here
BOOK
Night
Elie Wiesel
Former OFF speaker
Wiesel offers a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps.
Add Your Heading Text Here
BOOK
Winter is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped
Garry Kasparov
HRF Board Chairman
The stunning story of Russia’s slide into a dictatorship and how the West is paying the price for allowing it to happen — now, after years of complacency and poor judgment, winter is once again upon us.
Add Your Heading Text Here
BOOK
Gulag: A History
Anne Applebaum
Former OFF speaker
Applebaum offers a fully documented portrait of the Gulag, from its origins in the Russian Revolution, through its expansion under Stalin, to its collapse in the era of glasnost.
Add Your Heading Text Here
BOOK
To Build a Castle: My Life as a Dissenter
Vladimir Bukovsky
Former OFF speaker
Bukovsky, a Soviet-era Russian dissident, details his refusal to break under the pressure of 12 years of incarceration in a series of psychiatric hospitals, labor camps, and some of the Soviet Union’s worst prisons.
Add Your Heading Text Here
BOOK
Defeating Dictators: Fighting Tyranny in Africa and Around the World
George B.N. Ayittey
Founding member of HRF’s International Council
Ayittey describes the historical circumstances that led to the rise of brutal dictators and explains how Western governments have been complicit in helping dictators consolidate power.
Add Your Heading Text Here
BOOK
The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor
William Easterly
Former OFF participant
Easterly examines our failing efforts to fight global poverty, and argues that the top-down approach to development has not only made little lasting progress, but has proven a convenient rationale for decades of human rights violations.
Add Your Heading Text Here
BOOK
Against All Hope: A Memoir of Life in Castro's Gulag
Armando Valladares
Former OFF speaker
Arrested in 1960 for being philosophically and religiously opposed to communism, Valladares recounts his 20 years in Fidel Castro’s tropical gulag, suffering violence, putrid food, and squalid living conditions.
Add Your Heading Text Here
BOOK
The Feast of the Goat: A Novel
Mario Vargas Llosa
Former OFF speaker
Llosa recounts the end of Rafael Trujillo’s regime and the birth of a terrible democracy in the Dominican Republic, giving voice to Trujillo and the victims, both innocent and complicit, drawn into his deadly orbit.
Add Your Heading Text Here
BOOK
The Power of Powerless
Václav Havel
Former HRF Chairman
Written in 1978, Havel’s meditation on political dissent — the rituals of its suppression and the sparks that re-ignite it — would prove the guiding manifesto for uniting Solidarity movements across the Soviet Union.
Add Your Heading Text Here
BOOK
In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom
Yeonmi Park
HRF board member
Park tells with bravery and dignity the story of how she and her mother were sold into sexual slavery in China, suffering terrible hardship before finding freedom in South Korea.
