Stringer A Reporter's Journey in the Congo |
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Author:
| Sundaram, Anjan |
ISBN: | 978-0-345-80632-1 |
Publication Date: | Nov 2014 |
Publisher: | Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
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Imprint: | Anchor |
Book Format: | Paperback |
List Price: | USD $15.95 |
Book Description:
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Book of the Year, The Royal African Society (UK) In the powerful travel-writing tradition of Ryszard Kapuoeciñski and V.S. Naipaul, a haunting memoir of a dangerous and disorienting year of self-discovery in one of the world's unhappiest countries. In August 2005, Anjan Sundaram abandoned his path to a Yale Ph.D. in mathematics to travel to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and refashion himself as a journalist. He found a country that was...
More Description
Book of the Year, The Royal African Society (UK)
In the powerful travel-writing tradition of Ryszard Kapuoeciñski and V.S. Naipaul, a haunting memoir of a dangerous and disorienting year of self-discovery in one of the world's unhappiest countries.
In August 2005, Anjan Sundaram abandoned his path to a Yale Ph.D. in mathematics to travel to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and refashion himself as a journalist. He found a country that was diseased, corrupt, and poised on the cusp of war. When Sundaram is engaged as a "stringer" for the Associated Press, he becomes a chronicler for a country he's just beginning to experience. Stringer is his searing portrait of life in this broken, lawless place, an account of the rocky education of a reporter. Sundaram describes the grueling reality of daily existence in the Congo, intimately outlining his own struggle to make sense of life in a world where cab rides can end at gunpoint and rebel generals are only a phone call away. As the city of Kinshasha descends into anarchy after a contested election, Sundaram takes shelter in a factory to file report after report even as other journalists flee. Oscillating between anger and loneliness and between melancholy and exhilaration, Stringer completely transports us not only to the Congo--but to the limits of sanity, reason, and experience.