Warriors: Life and Death Among the Somalis

By Gerald Hanley

Book Overview

Somalia is one of the world's most desolate, sun-scorched lands, inhabited by fierce and independent-minded tribesmen. It was here that Gerald Hanley spent the Second World War, charged with preventing bloodshed between feuding tribes at a remote outstation. Rations were scarce, pay infrequent and his detachment of native soldiers near-mutinous. In these extreme conditions seven British officers committed suicide, but Hanley describes the period as the 'most valuable time' of his life. With intense curiosity and open-mindedness, he explores the effects of loneliness. He comes to understand the Somalis' love of fighting and to admire their contempt for death. 'Of all the races of Africa, ' he says, 'there cannot be one better to live among than the most difficult, the proudest, the bravest, the vainest, the most merciless, the friendliest: the Somalis.'

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0907871836
• ISBN13: 9780907871835
• Release Date: May 2005
• Publisher: Eland Publishing
• Length: 228 Pages
• Weight: 0.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.9" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

One of the most extraordinary books I have read

this is a hasty review. If you want to know about life in very hard places and times where people live constantly on the border beetween life and death and to undersand how people survive, love, live and die in such places then read this book.

One of the best at understanding Somalia

Though describing a bygone era in Somalia, this book has few peers when it comes to giving an up-close-and-personal view of the Somalis. Anyone wishing to understand how the US and United Nations came to get so mired in this Horn of Africa country should read this book--and note the lessons that that were never learned before the 1992-1993 humanitarian and military intervention there.