Philippe Sands

A force for good: Samantha Power is driven by a deep sense of idealism

Throughout her career, the author and diplomat has done more than most to raise awareness of the legal concept of genocide

In the spring of 2008 I spent a fine day in the company of Samantha Power. She had come to the Hay Festival to talk about Chasing the Flame, her book about Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN Special Representative to Iraq who was murdered in the August 2003 bombing of UN offices in Baghdad, who was Power’s colleague and friend. The audience was captivated by an exceptional individual, one who spoke with care and clarity, in a gravelly voice of distinct cadence. She was forthright, self-deprecating, intelligent, humorous and thoughtful in response to my questions and those of the audience. She was also a cracking storyteller, one who quickly won her audience over with a recollection of the moment President George W. Bush met de Mello, placed his hand on the diplomat’s shoulder and said: ‘You must work out.’

That is the only time I have met Power, and the memory has endured. In this context I received her memoir with happiness, and I was not disappointed. Those with an interest in the period she covers, and the world of human rights, atrocity and the limits of power, will devour a book that is human and revealing.

She has a fine story to tell, after the early years spent in Dublin before her mother, a medic, took her and her brother to America, away from a father who was an alcoholic dentist. That separation, at the age of nine, has left an obvious legacy, even if the gap was filled in part by a much-loved stepfather.

She went to Yale, then worked as a journalist, covering the conflict and genocide in former Yugoslavia. This traumatic and empowering experience touched her deeply, and it also made her. She took a law degree at Harvard, then wrote a book which won a Pulitzer Prize.

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