One Hour in Paris: A True Story of Rape and Recovery

Winner of the 2015 British Columbia National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction A Globe and Mail Top 100 Book of 2014 In this powerful memoir, philosopher Karyn L. Freedman travels back to a Paris night in 1990 when she was twenty-two and, in one violent hour, her life was changed forever by a brutal rape. At once deeply intimate and terrifyingly universal, One Hour in Paris takes the reader on a harrowing yet inspirational journey through suffering and recovery—from an apartment in Paris to a French courtroom, from a trauma centre in Toronto to a rape clinic in Africa. At a time when as many as one in three women have been victims of sexual assault and when many women are still ashamed to come forward, Freedman’s book is a moving and essential look at how survivors cope and persevere. One Hour in Paris is also an urgent call to face the fundamental social problem of sexual violence head-on, arguing that we absolutely must address the fact that sexual violence against women is rooted in gender inequalities that exist worldwide.