A writer’s 40-year search for his bully

In 1971, writer Allen Kurzweil, then 10, started school in a boarding school in Switzerland. Away from family, familiar places, and with the death of his father still fresh on his memory, Kurzweil was assigned to room with four other boys from different walks of life. One of them, a burly Filipino 12-year-old named Cesar Augustus Viana, would become his bully. After leaving the boarding school, Kurzweil then embarked on a 40-year search to find Viana. What he finds reopens old wounds – and ends with a surprising realization.

Read “Whipping Boy” in The New Yorker. Warning: This is a long read.