Stringer: A Reporter's Journey in the Congo

By Anjan Sundaram

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345806328
• ISBN13: 9780345806321
• Release Date: November 2014
• Publisher: Anchor Books
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.2" x 8.0"