Beslan: The Tragedy Of School No. 1

9.04 am, 1 September, 2004. A boy is standing with his classmates in the playground of School No. 1 in Beslan, in the Russian republic of North Ossetia. Looking around he notices an oddly dressed man in combat fatigues and a mask. He feels he ought to tell his mother, but is reluctant to fall out of line. By the time the siege ended two days later, at least 330 parents and children would be killed in the massive explosions that tore through the gymnasium or caught in the crossfire of a three hour gun battle between the Russian forces and the terrorists. Tim Phillips book tells the human story of the siege - of the terrible toll that thirst, hunger and sleeplessness took on the hostages, of the bravery of those who dealt with the terrorists, such as the elderly headmistress of the school and the doctor who tried to relieve the suffering of the young children. Phillips also looks at the authorities' response to the siege and finds it severely wanting. He has spent time in Beslan researching the book, talking to those involved and those affected, listening to the conspiracy theories, and trying to set the events of September 2004 in their wider context of centuries of conflict and enmity in the Caucasus.

Table of Contents:
Easter Sunday, 'The Happiest Day of My Year', 'Start Digging Your Own Graves', 'No Chance To Run Away', Educating Russia, 'You Have Done Nothing Wrong', 'This Is War!', 'You Killed All Six of My Brothers and Now I Must Kill You', 'I Will Remember You', 'As if Life Wasn't Difficult Enough', 'They're as Good as Dead Already', 'See What a Bad Boy I Am', 'Let Me Take Them Your Demands', 'The Lord of the Caucasus', 'There Are More than 1,300 of Us', 'The Revolution Fucked Everything Up', 'There Wasn't Even Any Air to Breathe', 'So You've Noticed, Then', 'Your Fate Is About to Be Decided', 'You Could Stay Out as Late as You Liked', 'It Felt Like There Was Something to Hope for Again', 'We Don't Think about How to Stop Terrorism Any More', Thirst, 'What They Came to Do Was Kill', 'I Didn't Find My Children', Truth and Beslan

About the Author :
Tim Phillips was born and grew up in Northern Ireland. In 2005 he completed a doctoral thesis on the role of the holiday resort in Russian culture, particularly in the Caucasus. He has studied at the universities of Oxford and Helsinki and has travelled widely in the former Soviet Union, including in the Caucasus. He has worked extensively as a translator and was the principal translator for the BBC on their Beslan documentaries. This is his first book.

Review :
* 'Fine and subtle... The book, based on extensive interviews, rouses pity and horror' John Lloyd, Financial Times* 'Timothy Phillips, on the other hand, has done a heroic and, one might have thought for a foreigner, impossible job: he has reconstructed from the testimony of many hundreds of witnesses the hellish events of that September ... His work is a fit memorial to the dead ... Timothy Phillips's book provides the victim's story' Donald Rayfield, Literary Review