Philippe Sands launches "38 Londres Street" in conversation with César Rodríguez-Garavito

Philippe Sands—world-renowned lawyer and acclaimed author of East West Street—joins us to launch his latest book, 38 Londres Street: On Impunity, Pinochet in England, and a Nazi in Patagonia

In conversation with César Rodríguez-Garavito, Sands will reflect on his powerful new work, which traces the paths of two of the twentieth century’s most merciless figures—accused of genocide and crimes against humanity—while probing the limits of immunity and impunity in the post-Nuremberg era.

• A book signing will follow.
• Copies of 38 Londres Street will be available for purchase at the event.

Event Passes

The event is open to the public but registration is required via eventbrite. 

About the author

Phlippe Sands is professor of law at the University of London, the Samuel Pisar Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School, and the author of East West Street. He is a frequent commentator on CNN and the BBC World Service, and a litigator before international courts. He is the former president of English PEN. Sands was a Global Professor of Law at NYU from 1990 to 2003. In 2003, Sands was appointed a Queen’s Counsel. He lives in London, England.

About the book

On the evening of October 16, 1998, Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was arrested at a medical clinic in London. After a brutal, seventeen-year reign marked by assassinations, disappearances, and torture—frequently tied to the infamous detention center at the heart of Santiago, Londres 38—Pinochet was being indicted for international crimes and extradition to Spain, opening the door to criminal charges that would follow him to the grave, in 2006.

Three decades earlier, on the evening of December 3, 1962, SS-Commander Walter Rauff was arrested in his home in Punta Arenas, at the southern tip of Chile. As the overseer of the development and use of gas vans in World War II, he was indicted for the mass murder of tens of thousands of Jews and faced extradition to West Germany.

Would these uncommon criminals be held accountable? Were their stories connected? The Nuremberg Trials—where Rauff’s crimes had first been read into the record, in 1945—opened the door to universal jurisdiction, and Pinochet’s case would be the first effort to ensnare a former head of state.

In this unique blend of memoir, courtroom drama, and travelogue, Philippe Sands gives us a front row seat to the Pinochet trial—where he acted as a barrister for Human Rights Watch—and teases out the dictator’s unexpected connection to a leading Nazi who ended up managing a king crab cannery in Patagonia. A decade-long journey exposes the chilling truth behind the lives of two men and their intertwined destinies on 38 Londres Street.