Philippe Sands

Besides being a lawyer, Philippe Sands is Professor of Law at University College, London. He has taken part in prominent trials held in the Court of Justice of the European Union, and the International Criminal Court in The Hague, among them the cases of Pinochet, the war in former Yugoslavia, the Rwanda genocide, and the invasion of Iraq. He has explored his interest in international law in more than fifteen books that have been awarded numerous prizes as well as being praised for their commitment to rigour. He frequently writes for such publications as the Financial Times and The Guardian, and he served as president of English PEN from February 2018 until April 2023.

His publications include essays, fiction, and academic writing. His book East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity (in Spanish Calle Este-Oeste, Anagrama, 2017), translated into some twenty languages and awarded several prizes, traces the past of his family and ponders the Holocaust on the basis of the Nuremberg trials. The Ratline: Love, Lies and Justice on the Trail of a Nazi Fugitive (in Catalan, Ruta d’escapada (Anagrama, 2021) focuses on the figure of Otto Wächter to probe the inhuman dimension of Europe’s recent past. His latest publication is The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice, and Courage (Knopf, 2023).