When
Enemy Combatant was first published in the United States in hardcover in 2006 it garnered sensational reviews, and its author was featured in the
New York Times, the
Los Angeles Times, on National Public Radio, and on ABC News. A second generation British Muslim, Begg had been held by the U.S. military for more than three years before being released without charge in January of 2005. His memoir is the first published account by a Guantánamo detainee of life inside the infamous prison.

Writing in the
Washington Post Book World, Jane Mayer described
Enemy Combatant as “fascinating . . . Begg provides some ideological counterweight to the one-sided spin coming from the U.S. government. He writes passionately and personally, stripping readers of the comforting lie that somehow the detainees aren’t really like us, with emotional attachments, intellectual interests and fully developed humanity.”

Recommended by the
Financial Times and
Tikkun magazine and a
Color Lines Editors’ Pick of Post-9/11 Books,
Enemy Combatant is “a forcefully told, up-to-the-minute political story . . . necessary reading for people on all sides of the issue” (
Publishers Weekly, starred review).