There is an Urdu word with no exact equivalent in English. Ehsaas is more than empathy , it is the moment another person’s suffering enters your conscience and refuses to leave until you have done something about it.

This book follows that single thread through Imran Khan’s public life: from a mosque in Lahore, where a woman who had almost nothing pressed five rupees into his hand and refused to take them back, to the cancer hospital and the university that such donations built; through twenty-two years in the political wilderness; to the welfare programme that carried the word as its name; and to the cell in Rawalpindi where he sits today.

It is not a conventional biography. It is an account of what one man came to believe he owed his country and of a refusal, repeated over three years of imprisonment, to buy his freedom by abandoning it.

This digital edition is free. Readers who wish to give are asked to support the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital.