Rachel Landers

Rachel Landers
Literary works	Who Bombed the Hilton?
Location in Sarkarverse

Rachel Landers is an Australian writer and film director, stationed in New South Wales.

Literary work

In 2013, Rachel Landers was awarded a number of monetary and career inducements by the Government of New South Wales for the ostensible purpose of producing a pseudo-historical exoneration of various police forces that botched up the investigation of the Hilton bombing. Repeatedly, they arrested and prosecuted innocent persons within Ananda Marga. In all of those cases, the accused were ultimately acquitted. In most of the cases, the acquittal came after a miscarriage of justice in which the accused were wrongly convicted and sent to prison. In 2016, Rachel released her work product under the title, Who Bombed the Hilton?

Endorsements

The blurb on the front cover of the Landers book and also, a bit expanded, on the title page of the book is attributed to Anna Funder. Anna bills herself as a human rights activist and advocate of the right to privacy. However, when attempts to contact Anna were made, it turned out that she cannot be reached via the Australian Privacy Foundation, of which she may be on the Advisory Panel. Her endorsement of the Landers book inevitably calls into question the accuracy of Anna's public image.

Awards

On 2016 November 23, Rachel Landers was awarded The Nib Waverley Library Award for Literature, also known as The Nib. This award is sponsored by the Government of New South Wales, who also commissioned the Landers propaganda piece, suggesting something less than an impartial decision.

Critiques

Leaving aside the aforementioned, self-serving award, reviews of the Landers book have been scanty and largely negative. The only reviews of the book on Amazon.com dismiss the book as "highly speculative", "very poor history", and "trash journalism". The first review also cautions that the book is marketed with "false advertising". In addition, Abhidevananda, one of the people libeled by Landers in her book, panned the book and its author in an article on one of his blogs.

Possible film?

Though it seems unlikely that the book would be produced as anything other than a fictional work (in poor taste), Rachel has been trying to hawk her book as a potential film. This is in contrast to the latest claim that the book actually emerged from a failed documentary film project. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, Rachel may be now claiming that her documentary film has not materialized, because she "couldn't persuade enough surviving main players to talk on camera". However, in the epilogue to her book, Rachel makes it abundantly clear that she made little or no effort to speak with any of the "surviving main players".