Philippe Sands

Philippe Sands
b. 1960, is a British and French writer, lawyer and Professor of International Law and Director of the Centre on International Courts and Tribunals at University College London. He is a passionate advocate of humanitarian projects and international law. His cases include that against former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Sands’ family roots are in Lviv, where most of his family was murdered during the Second World War. He was President of the English PEN from 2018 to 2023. In 2020, The Ratline was published in German as Die Rattenlinie – ein Nazi auf der Flucht and in 2017 Rückkehr nach Lemberg (original 2016: East West Street), which won the Baillie Gifford Prize and Wingate Literary Prize 2016 and was named Book of the Year by the British Book Awards 2017.

Recently published in German: Die letzte Kolonie. Verbrechen gegen die Menschlichkeit im Indischen Ozean, 2023 (original: The Last Colony 2022).

A gripping adventure, an astounding journey of discovery and a terrifying and timely portrait of evil in all its complexity, banality and self-justification ...”
Stephen Fry on The Ratline. Love, Lies and Justice on the Trail of a Nazi Fugitive