Beyond the Rope: A Captivity's Aftermath

In November 2008, while in Afghanistan writing a book on the region, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter David Rohde was abducted by Taliban gunmen.  At the time, he had been married only two months, to Cosmopolitan photography director Kristen Mulvihill.  Seven months later, after being moved from Logar Province to the tribal areas of Pakistan, after multiple videos depicting Rohde's captivity and a string of dead-end negotiations, Rodhe and his Afghan colleague Tahir Ludin escaped from the compound in which they were held.  Days later, Rohde was reunited with Mulvihill in Dubai, and within a week the two were back home in New York City.  In December 2009, the two began work on a book about their experiences during the period.  The resulting narrative, A Rope and a Prayer, was published in November 2010.  During the months that followed, on tour and elsewhere, Rohde and Mulvihill relived details of their ordeal for audiences both awestruck and enraged by what they had to say.

Original music by Ryan Rumery.  From the files of Yarn Audioworks.

Kristen Mulvihill has been a fashion and photography editor at various women’s magazines, including Marie Claire and Self. Most recently, she was the photography director ofCosmopolitan magazine. She is also a painter and illustrator.

David Rohde, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes in journalism, is a foreign affairs columnist for Reuters. Previously, he worked as a reporter for The New York Times for 15 years. He won his first Pulitzer Prize in 1996 for uncovering the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia for The Christian Science Monitor and his second in 2009 as part of a team of New York Times reporters covering Afghanistan and Pakistan. He is also the author of Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica.

They both grew up in New England, graduated from Brown University and live in New York.

To view more photos of David Rohde and Kristen Mulvihill, click here.

To order the book, click here.  To order the e-book, click here.  To pre-order the paperback edition (released Oct 25, 2011), click here.  To read Rohde's series of articles in the Times and view an interactive feature about his captivity, click here.