Girl in the Cellar: The Natascha Kampusch Story [Mass Market Paperback]

Allan Hall (Author), Michael Leidig (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 9, 2010

Eight years of darkness

On March 2, 1998, while on her way to school, ten-year-old Natascha Kampusch was abducted. More than eight years later, on August 23, 2006, she escaped with a story that shocked and horrified the entire world. She spent the most delicate years of her life hidden in a cellar underneath an ordinary Austrian suburban home. How was she able to survive? What sort of woman had emerged? What kind of man was Wolfgang Priklopil, her abductor—and what demands had he made of her?

Journalists Allan Hall and Michael Leidig covered Natascha's story from the beginning. The result of extraordinary investigative reporting, Girl in the Cellar gets to the heart of this very tragic case to reveal a truth no one would have imagined.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This exploration of the disturbing kidnapping and eight years of an Austrian girl as a hostage matches its tabloidesque topic. There's little doubt that Natascha Kampusch's captivity is captivating, and veteran journalists Hall and Leidig know the story well. For those who may know the story only from the headlines-she was abducted in Vienna and spent the next eight years as a prisoner in an urban fortress-they offer a wealth of new, often sensationalist background information about Kampusch, about her troubled relationship with her divorced parents, and about her abductor, Wolfgang Prikopil. For instance, before the kidnapping Prikopil went to the same bar frequented separately by Kampusch's father and by her mother's boyfriend. They are also critical of the way the local police handled the case, calling them both inefficient and simplistic in their methods. Unfortunately, many answers surrounding the case are still unknown: Prikopil committed suicide right after Kampusch escaped this summer, and Kampusch herself has been circumspect in discussing parts of her captivity. As a result, the authors have to rely on comments by neighbors and psychiatrists to speculate about the gaps: Did Prikopil sexually abuse Kampusch? Why did she take so long to run away, since after a few years Prikopil let her go out in public with him? Those fascinated by the case will be partially satiated, but much of this case that shocked Austria remains hidden.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Allan Hall has been a journalist for thirty-one years. Now based in Berlin, he was formerly the New York correspondent, first for the Sun and later for the Daily Mirror. He co-founded the Big Apple News media agency and has covered German-speaking Europe for the last eight years for newspapers such as the Times, the Scotsman, the Independent, the Mail on Sunday, the Daily Mail and the Age in Australia. He is the author of several encyclopedias of crime in addition to a number of other books, including A History of the Papacy and Nostradamus and Visions of the Future.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Harper; Reprint edition (March 9, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061945293
• ISBN-13: 978-0061945298
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #982,750 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Amazing story, however..., April 22, 2007

By 

J. Smith "rabies1" (Hingham, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Girl in the Cellar: The Natascha Kampusch Story (Hardcover)

I just finished this book. It is an amazing story containing photos of her tiny underground cell plus people and places of importance. It's the true story of a 10 year old girl who was kidnapped and escaped after 8 1/2 years. It makes my head reel just trying to imagine what that was like. She, however reveals little about her daily life. She says even less of her captor ( I remember she said he read to her). We are left with speculation. If she revealed more about her experiences this easily could have been a 5 star book.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great read with lots of information that was not in the media!, February 1, 2007

By 

Stormbringer (Europe) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Girl in the Cellar: The Natascha Kampusch Story (Hardcover)

I found this book compulsive reading. It presented a well written picture of a really complex crime, one which I think we have not heard the last of by a long way. The authors have pieced together a portrait of Natascha's dysfunctional family, reconstructing their links with Priklopil: They all drank in the same bar and the police never even knew! And their portrait of the failed police investigation to find her was both detailed and compelling. These guys packed a lot of detail in, if only other instant crime writing was as good. There were interviews with every one involved, including Natascha, her father, teachers, her doctors - and, oh yes, one of the cops who led the hunt for her who also found her mother flakey! A thoroughly good read I would heartily recommend.

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't bother, January 27, 2007

By 

Elia "dalgleish" (Schwenksville, PA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Girl in the Cellar: The Natascha Kampusch Story (Hardcover)

There are a few tidbits in this book that offer more information than can be found in news articles, but mostly the book is speculative, exploitative, and short on real insight. The authors quote "experts" who never met the principles but only reviewed media reports, use psychobabble about long-debunked theories of psychopathology and human development, interview people peripheral to the events with lots of speculation and few verifiable facts, distort what facts they do gather to spin conspiracy theories, take a few generalizations in a psychic's otherwise totally erroneous prediction and seem to offer them as proof of something, imply the victims are at least partly to blame for the crimes, and generally practice really poor true-crime writing. Add to these many problems writing as awkward as "Long before Wolfgang the master pupated from Wolfgang the servant" and you have a really distasteful book. Don't waste your money or time.