Search Results

“... As a member of Nairobi’s press corps, I often used to socialise with aid workers. The Kenyan capital was a perfect base for us. Its air links meant Africa’s various trouble spots, our professional bread and butter, were within easy striking distance: its shopping plazas, cafés and cinemas made it a place where those who had spent too long in the field dreamed of unwinding ...”

“... arap Moi (1978-2002), from one of Kenya’s minority tribes, things got a great deal worse. (Michela Wrong acknowledges that the word ‘tribe’ ‘raises eyebrows’ in the West, but points out that it is still used in Kenya today, and is indeed essential to an understanding of its society.) Great hopes were placed in the man who peacefully ...”

“... with ending the genocide of 1994 – ‘one of the fastest killing sprees in human history’, as Michela Wrong describes it – and leading Rwanda to peace and prosperity. This sterling reputation has ensured that questions are rarely asked about his government’s involvement in the killings and disappearance of a long series of political ...”

“... areas at the time of the liberation war, was a picaresque homage to the Eritrean people. Michela Wrong has attempted something different: an idiosyncratic, free-ranging history of Eritrea, from colonial times to the present, marvellously full of anecdote, archive and interview material. The book moves easily along, driven by ...”

“... The river itself is a flowing signifier for colonial greed, rapacity and, of course, horror. As Michela Wrong wrote in her memorable book about Mobutu, any Westerner who journeys to Congo follows ‘in the footsteps of Mr Kurtz’. And not only Kurtz. After Conrad came Gide, Greene, Kapuściński, Mailer and Naipaul. Congo is endlessly fertile literary ...”

“... the Cold War that also offers some pointers for the future. The right people have lost but the wrong people have won. Capitalism must stage its own glasnost, which perhaps it can now that anti-Communism won’t provide ideological cover for low deeds. Unhappily, this isn’t the view taken by the likes of Sir Anthony Joyston Bradshaw, an arms dealer who ...”