Seminar in Ukrainian Studies | Book Talk
East West Street: On the Origins of "Genocide" and "Crimes Against Humanity"
Philippe Sands, Professor of Law at University College London and Samuel Pisar Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School
in conversation with Serhii Plokhii, Director, Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard
Winner of the 2016 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction
A profound and profoundly important book—a moving personal detective story, an uncovering of secret pasts, and a book that explores the creation and development of world-changing legal concepts that came about as a result of the unprecedented atrocities of Hitler’s Third Reich.
East West Street looks at the personal and intellectual evolution of the two men who simultaneously originated the ideas of “genocide” and “crimes against humanity,” both of whom, not knowing the other, studied at the same university with the same professors, in a city little known today that was a major cultural center of Europe, “the little Paris of Ukraine,” a city variously called Lemberg, Lwów, Lvov, or Lviv. It is also a spellbinding family memoir, as the author traces the mysterious story of his grandfather, as he maneuvered through Europe in the face of Nazi atrocities.
East West Street is a book that changes the way we look at the world, at our understanding of history and how civilization has tried to cope with mass murder.
Philippe Sands QC is Professor of Law at University College London and a practising barrister at Matrix Chambers. He appears before many international courts and tribunals, including the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, and sits as an arbitrator at ICSID, the PCA and the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Philippe is the author of Lawless World (2005) and Torture Team (2008) and several academic books on international law, and has contributed to the New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, the Financial Times and The Guardian.
East West Street: On the Origins of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide (2016) won the 2016 Baillie Gifford (formerly Samuel Johnson) Prize, the 2017 British Book Awards Non-Fiction Book of the Year, and the 2018 Prix Montaigne. The sequel, which is also the subject of a BBC podcast, The Ratline, will be published in April 2020.
Philippe is President of English PEN and a member of the Board of the Hay Festival.
Room S-050, CGIS South Building
1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA
