Presented with accounts of genocide and torture, we ask how people could bring themselves to commit such horrendous acts. A searching meditation on our all-too-human capacity for inhumanity, Evil Men confronts atrocity head-on--how it looks and feels, what motivates it, how it can be stopped. Drawing on firsthand interviews with convicted war criminals from the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937--1945), James Dawes leads us into the frightening territory where soldiers perpetrated some of the worst crimes imaginable: murder, torture, rape, medical experimentation on living subjects. Transcending conventional reporting and commentary, Dawes's narrative weaves together unforgettable segments from the interviews with consideration of the troubling issues they raise. Telling the personal story of his journey to Japan, Dawes also lays bare the cultural misunderstandings and ethical compromises that at times called the legitimacy of his entire project into question. For this book is not just about the things war criminals do. It is about what it is like, and what it means, to befriend them. Do our stories of evil deeds make a difference? Can we depict atrocity without sensational curiosity? Anguished and unflinchingly honest, as eloquent as it is raw and painful, Evil Men asks hard questions about the most disturbing capabilities human beings possess, and acknowledges that these questions may have no comforting answers.

作者簡介

詹姆士．道斯 James Dawes

劍橋大學哲學碩士，哈佛大學英國文學博士，哈佛大學院士學會青年院士，美國英語文學教授，擅長領域包括：反文化；人權：文學與語言理論；暴力與創傷；文學與哲學。其著作《惡人：普通人如何變成惡魔》（Evil Men, 2013）獲國際人權圖書獎；《好讓世界知道》（World May Know: Bearing Witness to Atrocity, 2007）入圍獨立出版圖書獎決選名單。另著有《語言的戰爭》（The Language of War, 2002）。不時在各大媒體（全國公共廣播電台、BBC、保加利亞國家電台、《波士頓全球報》、《高等教育紀事報》和CNN網站等）亮相或撰稿。

譯者簡介

梁永安

台灣大學文化人類學學士、哲學碩士，東海大學哲學博士班肄業。目前為專業翻譯者，共完成約近百本譯著，包括《文化與抵抗》（Culture and Resistance / Edward W. Said）、《啟蒙運動》（The Enlightenment / Peter Gay）、《現代主義》（Modernism：The Lure of Heresy / Peter Gay）等。