The Last Monk of Tibhirine: A True Story of Martyrdom, Faith, and Survival
In 2006, seven Roman Catholic monks were kidnapped from a long-standing Trappist monastery in Algeria and eventually murdered. In 2010, the award-winning docudrama film, Of Gods and Men, created a way for an international audience to learn about the kidnap victims as well as the usually apolitical interactions they had had with their Muslim neighbors. In 2011, Derwahl, a Belgian-German journalist who lived briefly as a postulant at the Tibhirine and was familiar with some of the martyred monks, spent weeks at a monastery in Morocco, where the last remaining Tibhirine survivor, Jean-Pierre, now makes his home. Derwahl interweaves his own daily reflections on his current reading, including works by the current pope, with Jean-Pierre’s life, elicited during daily interviews. As a whole, this creates an accessible and compelling window on the humanity of dedicated contemplatives and the elastic nature of religious tradition fitted to multicultural negotiation. For general as well as Christian readers. --Francisca Goldsmith