Book Summary and Reviews of Adnan's Story by Rabia Chaudry

Adnan's Story by Rabia Chaudry

Adnan's Story

The Search for Truth and Justice After Serial

by Rabia Chaudry

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  • Published:
  • Aug 2016, 416 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

After more than twenty years in prison, Adnan Syed's murder conviction was overturned, and he was finally set free. Rabia Chaudry's New York Times bestseller and award-winner Adnan's Story reveals how the case was mishandled and became the subject of Sarah Koenig's Peabody Award-winning podcast Serial.

In early 2000, Adnan Syed was convicted and sentenced to life plus thirty years for the murder of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee, a high school senior in Baltimore, Maryland. Syed has maintained his innocence, and Rabia Chaudry, a family friend, has always believed him. By 2013, after almost all appeals had been exhausted, Rabia contacted Sarah Koenig, a producer at This American Life, in hopes of finding a journalist who could shed light on Adnan's story. In 2014, Koenig's investigation turned into Serial, a Peabody Award-winning podcast with more than 500 million international listeners.

But Serial did not tell the whole story. In this compelling narrative, Rabia Chaudry presents key evidence that she maintains dismantles the State's case: a potential new suspect, forensics indicating Hae was killed and kept somewhere for almost half a day, and documentation withheld by the State that destroys the cell phone evidence―among many other points―and she shows how fans of Serial joined a crowd-sourced investigation into a case riddled with errors and strange twists. Featuring information about Adnan's life in prison, and weaving in his personal reflections with never-before-seen letters, Rabia's account is "a true story about real people. Adnan's Story adds context and humanizes it in a way that could change how you think about the case and about Serial itself" (Los Angeles Times).

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Readers new to the story will have no trouble following―the narrative is outlined extensively from the beginning―and podcast listeners will find plenty of previously undisclosed material...She strongly makes the case for cultural and religious bias in the investigation and conviction and presents damaging evidence of police misconduct, including tampering with evidence and a witness. She also examines other suspects and their possible motives and alibis." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A page-turner...[Chaudry's] writing is clear, eloquent, and engaging, and her case is convincing." ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review

"A skillfully written account of injustice that will have wide appeal to fans of Serial and readers of human interest stories, and is especially timely as Syed's conviction was vacated in July 2016 and a new trial granted." ―Library Journal

This information about Adnan's Story was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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Author Information

Rabia Chaudry

Rabia Chaudry is an attorney and partner at Chaudry & Anwer Immigration Law, a recent Jennings Randolph Fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace, an International Security Fellow at the New America think tank, and a Fellow of the Shalom Hartman Institute. She is the co-host of Undisclosed, one of the top-ranked podcasts in the iTunes store with nearly 250 million downloads, and The 45th, with over four million downloads. She is a member of the National Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council and the Aspen Institute Vanguard Board. She is a frequent public speaker, and her writing has appeared in numerous outlets including Time.com, The Huffington Post, and the Chicago Sun-Times.

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