From the Place of the Dead
The Epic Struggles of Bishop Belo of East Timor
In 1975, Indonesia illegally invaded East Timor, until then a Portuguese colony. Since then, an estimated 200,000 people, nearly one-third of the territory's original population, have perished from war, famine, and killings. Now, after the fall of Indonesia's longtime strongman, General Suharto, East Timor is in the public eye and seems on the verge of winning independence. No one has been more crucial to this development than Bishop Belo, the first Catholic bishop ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize. In From the Place of the Dead, journalist Arnold Kohen has written the first full-length biography of Bishop Belo. Kohen, who has had unparalleled access to Bishop Belo for the past five years, provides not only a penetrating portrait of the Timorese prelate, but also the definitive account of a tortured country and the politics in which it is embroiled.
