Hunting History: A Writer’s Odyssey is an unforgettable journey through time, memory, and the enduring power of storytelling. From an unexpected visit to a Nazi death camp to gripping encounters with perpetrators of atrocities, their victims, determined activists, and wily propagandists, award-winning author Erna Paris takes readers on a deeply personal exploration of how history is remembered, manipulated, and lived.
Blending investigative journalism with memoir, Paris traces a lifelong quest to understand the psychological and cultural forces that shape the best and worst of human behavior—its triumphs and its darkest impulses. In this, her final work, she delivers a profound and urgent meditation on truth, justice, and the writer’s role in illuminating the past to guide the future.
“Erna Paris shone her flashlight into many dark corners of human history during her life. In this, her last book, she gives us insights and warnings that couldn’t be more timely.”
– Margaret Atwood
“Erna Paris was driven by a passion for one big thing : the truth. Her writing is filled with honesty, humour, anger and courage. In this, her final book, she tells us how she found her voice. It is a wonderful testament.”
– Bob Rae
“Erna Paris is always impressive in her humanity and deep personal understanding of contemporary history.”
– The Rt. Hon. Adrienne Clarkson
“A life well written: An inspiring reader’s guide through the shadows of terror and dehumanization into the flickering sunlight of justice and reconciliation.”
– Patrick Martin, former Middle East correspondent of The Globe and Mail
“Erna Paris’ memoir takes us down the crisscrossing paths of her personal life, her career as a writer and her investigation of how we remember – sometimes misremember - a dozen epic historical and contemporary struggles for social justice and tolerance. All these paths are laid down in impeccable prose, paved with shrewd insight and careful research and illuminated by Paris’ admirable ability to combine unflinching righteousness with a sympathy for human frailty. A life well-lived, a book that demands to be read.”
– Harry Arthurs
“It is this looping of external and internal forces, the public and private, the grandiose and the intimate that propels Paris’s vivid narrative until finally she can write that her life’s subject, her moral compass as person and writer, has been “justice” for the unrequited dead of our collective past. Paris was that all too rare literary professional.”
– Myrna Kostash
“Powerful and poignant! Erna Paris’s lifelong commitment to truth and social justice, and her profound humanity, shine through Hunting History, as do her sharp intelligence and humour.”
– Charlotte Grey
This book was made with the generous support of the Manitoba Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts.
