With some 200 million people affected by armed conflict or genocide, refugees are appearing in record numbers. War Torn takes us beyond the headlines into the lives of civilians caught up in war’s destructive power in Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia, Guatemala, and Sri Lanka. Alongside stories that convey the destruction and heartbreak of armed conflict, Ken Miller captures the courage and resilience he calls “a remarkable kind of light,” an essential counterpoint to the grief and trauma that war creates. The stories in War Torn are powerful, heart-wrenching, and unforgettable.
Drawing on his extensive research and clinical experience, Miller also offers a nuanced critique of the overly narrow focus on PTSD among survivors of armed conflict.
War Torn provides harrowing first-hand insights into human suffering across contexts burned into global consciousness...But the extraordinarily sensitive and insightful book ultimately communicates most powerfully regarding the humanity that endures in such adversity. We would benefit from War Torn being compulsory reading…
Ken Miller’s gift is the way he listens, which takes him and his readers beyond simple categories of war victim or trauma survivor to the complex experiences people have in settings torn apart by violence. I’m grateful for the way he has captured the simultaneously disabling and inspiring coexistence of darkness and light in these places.
War Torn is an exceptional, gripping account of the impact of war— a must-read for anyone interested in how war profoundly touches and shapes people's lives.
The courage and resilience on display in these eye-opening and heart-wrenching accounts is matched only by Miller’s brave and unflinching resolve to spend his life working in refugee camps and on the front lines, bearing witness to the individual horrors of armed conflict, while trying to help the victims heal, however imperfectly. With clarity of thought and prose, he also reminds us that "while people may be deeply wounded by the hardships they’ve endured, their spirits or psyches are seldom irreparably broken.
