Obama, J.K. Rowling Among Top-Requested Authors by Gitmo Detainees

It’s surprising to many that the detention center at Guantanamo Bay has a library, but it does — and an extensive one at that. The U.S. military likes to hold up the library as proof that detainees are treated humanely; while that’s open to debate, they sure do have a lot of books to read. According to PRI, the library has thousands of volumes in sixteen languages, “including English, Arabic, Farsi, Pashtu, Urdu and Uzbek,” including poetry, history, fiction, comic books, and religious texts.

When pan-Arab newspaper Dar Al-Hayat asked the librarian at Guantanamo Bay what the most-requested books were, this is what they found:

1. The Harry Potter novels, by J.K. Rowling

2. Don Quixote, by Cervantes

3. Dreams from my Father, by Barack Obama

…followed by Muslim holy texts.

In the article, no explanation is given for why these particular books were so popular, but one of the entries is sure to rile up a lot of conservatives — and it isn’t Don Quixote.

There’s lots more fascinating analysis of this list — including an analogy made by an actual Guantanamo Bay prisoner between Bush and Voldemort — at Times Online’s Comment Central.

(image from fanboy.com)

h/t Comment Central via The Morning News

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