Lost to the World: A Memoir of Faith, Family, and Five Years in Terrorist Captivity

by Shahbaz Taseer

Overview

Shahbaz Taseer’s memoir of his five-year-long captivity at the hands of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

In late August 2011, Shahbaz Taseer was dragged from his car at gunpoint and kidnapped by members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), a Talibanaffiliated Uzbek terrorist group. Taseer’s father, the governor of Punjab, Pakistan, had recently been assassinated for speaking in support of a Christian woman who had been accused of blasphemy and sentenced to death. Though Taseer himself wasn’t involved in politics, he was still a public figure who represented a more tolerant, internationally connected Pakistan that the IMU condemned. What followed his kidnapping was nearly five years of torture and constant peril as Taseer was held captive by the IMU in the ungoverned reaches of Pakistan and Afghanistan, his fate subject to the unpredictable whims and machinations of terrorists. Lost to the World is his memoir of that time—a story of extraordinary sorrow but also of empathy and faith.

While deeply harrowing, this tale is also about resilience. Taseer countered his captors’ narrative of a holy war by immersing himself in the Quran in search of hope and a means to see his own humanity under even the most inhumane conditions, and ultimately to find a way back to his family.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250872234
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	11/14/2023
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.37(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.68(d)

About the Author

Shahbaz Taseer is a Pakistani businessman and the son of the late governor of Punjab, Pakistan. Taseer was held in captivity for almost five years and was recovered from Kuchlak, Balochistan, on March 8, 2016. His kidnapping was referred to by The Guardian as one of the highest-profile kidnappings in Pakistan.

Editorial Reviews

"Taseer’s story is both chilling and infused with bravery and wisdom. This testament to the resilience of the human spirit will inspire any reader." —Publishers Weekly

“What a book. Lost to the World is a survival narrative unlike any other. In this unforgettable page-turner, true-life miracles and high-tech death fall from the sky. Our hero endures medieval torments, witnesses acts of sudden kindness, and escapes one surreal prison and battlefield after another. Above all, Shahbaz Taseer’s account of his captivity and liberation is, like Papillon and Unbroken, a deeply moving testament to the triumph of the human spirit.” —Héctor Tobar, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Deep Down Dark

“Shahbaz Taseer draws you into his endless imprisonment. I was afraid of turning the page, afraid of what lay ahead. I found myself oscillating between tears and laughter. This memoir is a complete tour de force of emotions. I am convinced that it was Taseer’s compassion and resilience that kept him alive and that he was guided by the faith he had in his family and the courage instilled in him by his father.”

—Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, Academy Award–winning filmmaker and journalist

From the Publisher

2022-09-08
A Pakistani businessman recounts his harsh captivity under the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

On Aug. 6, 2011, Taseer, the son of a prominent Pakistani media tycoon and politician who was assassinated in January of the same year, was abducted on his way to his office in Lahore. The kidnappers hid Taseer first in a safe house in Lahore, then spirited him away to Mir Ali, the border region of Northern Waziristan run by warlords. The Uzbek cell was headed by the brutal terrorist Muhammad Ali, who seemed to enjoy tormenting Taseer with twisted Quranic logic and torturing him without mercy while being filmed to extort ransom money from his family. Ali considered Taseer his “golden goose,” and he made exorbitant demands that Taseer’s family could not meet. The kidnappers kept the author in squalid conditions, without electricity, “chained and barely able to move,” with nothing but a Quran to read. For the first time in his life, he notes, he began reading it “seriously,” and he challenged his captor on his fraudulent interpretation of the text and his “great pious superiority.” Taseer maintained his courage and sanity by thinking about his father, who withstood months of solitary confinement in prison in the 1980s. After drone strikes on the camp, Taseer was moved to Ali’s home complex, and Ali’s compassionate mother-in-law put a stop to his torture. When full-scale war broke out between the Taliban and the government, Ali shifted allegiances from the Taliban to the Islamic State group. During the ensuing chaos, Taseer was able to slip way, ending four and a half years in captivity. The fluid, often dramatic narrative is punctuated with raw, graphic details, but the author stops short of rendering deep political or religious insights. Nonetheless, Taseer’s story alone makes the book a page-turner.

A rare story of actual survival from brutal terrorists.

Kirkus Reviews