Forgiveness: Breaking the Chain of Hate. (Urgent medicine).

Forgiveness: breaking the chain of hate' is published in the UK by Grosvenor Books, London, price 11.50 [pounds sterling] paperback, ISBN 1-85239-031-X; and in the US by BookPartners Inc, Newberg, Oregon, ISBN 1-58151-115-9.

When Lewis B Smedes, American author of The art of forgiving and Forgive and forget, says that a book is the best he has read on forgiveness, it's worth taking note. Smedes gives his endorsement to Michael Henderson's Forgiveness: breaking the chain of hate, an extract from which was published as an article in For A Change (Feb/Mar 2000). The book consists of `a harvest of marvellous stories that add lively support to its urgent message', says Smedes.

First published in the US by BookPartners Inc of Newberg, Oregon, Forgiveness: breaking the chain of hate has been re-issued in the US and published for the first time in the UK in an updated edition. Henderson has added new material and revised his preface in the wake of the 11 September tragedy.

The new edition features a foreword by the Indian historian and journalist, Rajmohan Gandhi. `Michael Henderson offers this new edition ... as evidence that the stuff of forgiveness is sterner than suspected,' writes Gandhi. `It does not condone evil, and evil, on its part, cannot extinguish the power of forgiveness.

`Even when our indignation appears to us wholly justified, most of us, whether Arabs, Jews, Americans, Afghans, Indians, Pakistanis, Kashmiri Muslims, Kashmiri Pandits or whoever, are also aware that personal bitterness can be like acid that corrodes us from within without damaging those whom we are bitter toward,' adds Gandhi. `Most of us, therefore, are in favour of some forgiveness somewhere. If that is so, we will find medicine in [this book] sensitively dispensed.'

The front cover of the UK edition carries an endorsement by Archbishop Desmond Tutu: `A deeply moving and eloquent testimony to the power of forgiveness in the life of individuals, of communities ... It effects change--a powerful book. It is just right for such a time as this.'