Echoes of Violence: Letters from a War Reporter

by Carolin Emcke

"Nobody I ever met on my assignments . . . asked me for direct, practical help. . . . But over and over again people have asked me: 'Will you write this down?' "--Echoes of Violence
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Echoes of Violence is an award-winning collection of personal letters to friends from a foreign correspondent who is trying to understand what she witnessed during the iconic human disasters of our time--in Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan,...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0691129037
• ISBN13: 9780691129037
• Release Date: February 2007
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.8" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Not your usual war reporter

Although Carolin Emcke's compelling new book is subtitled "Letters from a War Reporter," she fits none of the stereotypes that the rubric of war reporter suggests. Nowhere in her writing does the reader find the cynical, hard-bitten media professional who -- writing on short deadlines for a largely uninformed audience -- has little interest in exploring complexity or challenging the conventional wisdom. Emcke's letters, written first for her friends and later compiled for publication, give the back story that is left out of most international news reporting. Reading them, one sees a thoughtful but utterly human person at work -- not an omniscient narrator, but someone with emotions, opinions, subjectivity, and humor. Emcke describes herself as a witness, and some of the most compelling passages in the book reveal her grappling with the difficulty of being a faithful witness to situations that are in some sense indescribable. Emcke has an eye for the telling detail. Describing a hotel in Prishtina, Kosovo, for example, she notes on a visit in 2000 that "the porn magazine in the desk drawer offers 'phone sex with mature women' in a country with no functioning telephone lines." (A few years later human rights observers documented the role of NATO troops and UN police in encouraging the rapid growth of sex-trafficking and forced prostitution in Kosovo.) Unlike reporters who cover local or national beats -- who can assume that their readership shares a history and culture with the people described, or is at least familiar with that history and culture -- journalists covering foreign crises have to do more than report the facts: they have to translate between worlds. Emcke's moving book shows that this role of translator requires sensitivity, empathy, and understanding, qualities she has in abundance.