Asia-Pacific

Austrian kidnap victim releases book on ordeal

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-09-08 19:27

The book 3,096 Days by kidnap victim Natascha Kampusch is on display in a bookstore in Vienna September 8, 2010. Kampusch's memoirs, which appeared in Vienna on Tuesday, recount how her captor Wolfgang Priklopil starved her, beat her so badly that she could not lie on her back and forced her to clean his house half-naked, calling her his slave.[Photo/Agencies]

VIENNA -- An Autobiography of an Austrian girl who was kidnapped at the age of 10 and held for eight years hit shelves here on Wednesday.

In March 1998, the school girl Natascha Kampusch was abducted by Wolfgang Priklopil, a 44-year-old communications technician, off a Vienna street while she was on her way to school. She was held in a secret cellar until her escape on August 23, 2006.

In the book titled 3,096 Days, Kampusch, now 22, recounts her sufferings at the hands of the kidnapper, who killed himself after Kampusch's escape by jumping under a train.

The kidnapper called Kampusch "my slave" and demanded she perform household tasks semi-naked. He also shaved her head bald, regularly beat her, sometimes up to 200 times a week, and used food deprivation to keep her under his control. She tried to commit suicide three times. But the worst of all feelings was the loneliness in the cellar, Kampusch writes in the book.

Kampusch will speak about the book Friday at a bookstore in Vienna, but has said she would neither answer any questions posed by fans nor provide autographs.

According to Austrian media, Kampusch, whose book will be published in 11 European countries, will travel to Germany, Britain, Holland and France for promotion work.

In recent years, Kampusch has become a host of her own talkshow at an Austria TV station. German film-producer Bernd Eichinger has announced that he was making a film based on Kampusch's captivity, and had her support for his plans.