A Uyghur’s Lament for a Persecuted People

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WAITING TO BE ARRESTED AT NIGHT: A Uyghur Poet’s Memoir of China’s Genocide, by Tahir Hamut Izgil. Translated by Joshua L. Freeman. The Uyghur poet Tahir Hamut Izgil’s new memoir, “Waiting to Be Arrested at Night,” is an outlier among books about human rights. There are no scenes of torture, no violence and few sweeping proclamations about genocide. Izgil writes with calculated restraint. As his title suggests, the terror is in the anticipation. This is in effect a psychological thriller, although the narrative unfolds like a classic horror movie as relative normalcy dissolves into a nightmare. When the book opens,...