Most accounts of negotiations focus on presidents, prime ministers, and a single dramatic handshake. They rarely ask who carried the messages, softened the insults, or rewrote the clauses that made that handshake possible. This book steps into that gap, tracing the world of backchannel diplomacy and the people who quietly keep talks alive. Drawing on vivid peace negotiation case studies, it follows interpreters, shuttle envoys, legal drafters, and community intermediaries who turn deadlock into movement. Readers interested in international relations diplomacy and political intermediaries and envoys will find clear, story-rich explanations of how real deals are shaped away from podiums and press releases. The book shows how conflict resolution backchannels, women peacebuilders stories, and track two diplomacy work together to test ideas, build trust, and contain spoilers before anything is announced. Designed for students, practitioners, journalists, and engaged citizens, it offers a grounded guide to secret negotiation history and interpreters in diplomacy without romanticising secrecy or offering quick fixes. By the end, readers will see how sanctions and peace deals are linked to a dense web of human judgment, ethical tension, and practical improvisation and why understanding those hidden choices is essential to reading today’s crises with a clearer, more informed eye.
Backchannel Builders
SKU: 9789376553006
$22.99 Regular Price
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- Selma Aarvik is a writer and interviewer who has spent much of her career listening at the edges of official politics. She has followed peace processes, sanctions debates, and constitutional rewrites across several regions, paying particular attention to the people whose work rarely makes the communiques. Her reporting has brought her into conversation with interpreters, track-two convenors, legal drafters, and community peacebuilders who hold fragile lines open when leaders cannot speak directly. Growing up in a Nordic country where quiet mediation and compromise have long been part of political culture, she became fascinated by the contrast between public ceremony and private problem-solving. Her books and essays focus on how ordinary tools language, trust, timing, and institutional design shape extraordinary outcomes. She writes for readers who want clear, historically grounded accounts of how power really moves behind the scenes, and who are curious about the human skills that keep conflicts from sliding into catastrophe.
