Read Anywhere and on Any Device!

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!

Create Free Account

In the Land of Magic Soldiers: A Story of White and Black in West Africa

3.9/5 ( ratings)

An Los Angeles Times Best Book 2003

A chilling, beautifully written narrative of African war

Sierra Leone is the world's most war-ravaged country. There, in a West African landscape of spectacular beauty, rampaging soldiers--many not yet in their teens--have made a custom of hacking off the hands of their victims, then letting them live as the ultimate emblem of terror. The country is so anarchic and so desperate that, forty years after independence, its people long to be recolonized. And the West wants to save it.

Daniel Bergner's In the Land of Magic Soldiers follows both a set of white would-be saviors--a family of American missionaries, a mercenary helicopter gunship pilot, and the army of Great Britain--and also a set of Sierra Leoneans, among them a father who rescues his daughter from rape, loses his hands as punishment, then begins to rebuild his life; a child soldier and sometime cannibal; and a highly Westernized medical student who claims immunity to bullets and a cure for H.I.V.

A story of black and white, of the First World and the world left infinitely behind, of those who would nation-build and those who live in a land of fire and jungle, In the Land of Magic Soldiers is an unforgettable work of literary reportage by "a terrific reporter with a novelist's eye" .

Language: English

Pages: 224

Format: Paperback

Publisher: Picador

Release: October 01, 2004

ISBN: 031242292X

ISBN 13: 9780312422929

In the Land of Magic Soldiers: A Story of White and Black in West Africa

3.9/5 ( ratings)

An Los Angeles Times Best Book 2003

A chilling, beautifully written narrative of African war

Sierra Leone is the world's most war-ravaged country. There, in a West African landscape of spectacular beauty, rampaging soldiers--many not yet in their teens--have made a custom of hacking off the hands of their victims, then letting them live as the ultimate emblem of terror. The country is so anarchic and so desperate that, forty years after independence, its people long to be recolonized. And the West wants to save it.

Daniel Bergner's In the Land of Magic Soldiers follows both a set of white would-be saviors--a family of American missionaries, a mercenary helicopter gunship pilot, and the army of Great Britain--and also a set of Sierra Leoneans, among them a father who rescues his daughter from rape, loses his hands as punishment, then begins to rebuild his life; a child soldier and sometime cannibal; and a highly Westernized medical student who claims immunity to bullets and a cure for H.I.V.

A story of black and white, of the First World and the world left infinitely behind, of those who would nation-build and those who live in a land of fire and jungle, In the Land of Magic Soldiers is an unforgettable work of literary reportage by "a terrific reporter with a novelist's eye" .

Language: English

Pages: 224

Format: Paperback

Publisher: Picador

Release: October 01, 2004

ISBN: 031242292X

ISBN 13: 9780312422929

More books from Daniel Bergner

What Do Women Want?: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire

3.6/5 ( ratings)

Sing for Your Life: A Story of Race, Music, and Family

3.8/5 ( ratings)

The Other Side of Desire: Four Journeys into the Far Realms of Lust and Longing

3.5/5 ( ratings)

God of the Rodeo: The Quest for Redemption in Louisiana's Angola Prison

3.7/5 ( ratings)

Soldiers of Light

The Mind and the Moon: My Brother's Story, the Science of Our Brains, and the Search for Our Psyches

3.6/5 ( ratings)

O que realmente as mulheres querem: A ciência e uma nova perspectiva sobre o desejo feminino

3.6/5 ( ratings)

Mit dem Kochlöffel durch die sächsische Geschichte: 25 berühmte Sachsen bitten zu Tisch

3.6/5 ( ratings)

What Do Women Want? Adventures in the Science of Female Desire

3.6/5 ( ratings)

Rate this book!

Write a review?