The Killing Season - (Human Rights and Crimes Against Humanity) by Geoffrey B Robinson (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The definitive account of one of the twentieth century's most brutal, yet least examined, episodes of genocide and detention

The Killing Season explores one of the largest and swiftest, yet least examined, instances of mass killing and incarceration in the twentieth century-the shocking antileftist purge that gripped Indonesia in 1965-66, leaving some five hundred thousand people dead and more than a million others in detention. An expert in modern Indonesian history, genocide, and human rights, Geoffrey Robinson sets out to account for this violence and to end the troubling silence surrounding it. In doing so, he sheds new light on broad, enduring historical questions. How do we account for instances of systematic mass killing and detention? Why are some of these crimes remembered and punished, while others are forgotten? Based on a rich body of primary and secondary sources, The Killing Season is the definitive account of a pivotal period in Indonesian history.

From the Back Cover

"Finally, a full accounting of one of the most brutal events in twentieth-century history. Geoffrey Robinson's The Killing Season documents, in chilling detail, the mass murder of half a million Indonesians between 1965 and 1966. Based on fine-grained research, Robinson's book is a model of analytical and moral clarity, shining a damning light on U.S. complicity in the atrocity. This is a tour de force."--Greg Grandin, author of Fordlandia

"This elegantly written and carefully crafted book provides the single most sustained and systematic evaluation of the competing and contradictory theories concerning the coup which helped to precipitate the mass killings of late 1965 and early 1966 in Indonesia. Robinson's arguments are clear, coherent, and compelling, and the evidence presented is impressively well-documented. This is the definitive account of a highly important aspect of Indonesian history."--John T. Sidel, London School of Economics and Political Science

"This masterful and engrossing book illuminates the mass violence and incarceration that took place during the transition to the three-decade Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia. Displaying a superb command of Indonesian history and sources, The Killing Season is an important corrective to conventional wisdom about a little-known genocidal campaign that destroyed an estimated 500,000 victims."--Jens Meierhenrich, London School of Economics and Political Science

Review Quotes

"Longlisted for the 2019 ICAS Book Prize in Humanities, International Convention of Asia Scholars"

"One of the Financial Times' Best Books of 2018: History"

"One of Foreign Affairs' Picks for Best of Books 2018"

"Winner of the Distinguished Book Award in Non-U.S. History, Society for Military History"

"Winner of the George McT. Kahin Prize, Association for Asian Studies"

"Winner of the Raphael Lemkin Book Award, Institute for the Study of Genocide"

About the Author

Geoffrey B. Robinson is professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles. His books include The Dark Side of Paradise and "If You Leave Us Here, We Will Die" (Princeton).