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From Publishers Weekly
In 1996 the brutal civil war in Rwanda spilled into neighboring Congo, triggering a conflict that has seethed for 12 long years, claimed more lives than any since WWII and received little acknowledgment or aid from the international community. AP correspondent Mealer spent three years in this shattered land, and his book is a perceptive, empathetic, stomach-twisting presentation of the human condition during chaos. Mealer depicts war and peace as the mighty arms of a hurricane; war hurtles thousands of terrified people into the bush; intermittent peace lures the lost ones home. Individuals and institutions, indigenous and Western alike, are overwhelmed by the confluence of political collapse, economic disintegration, international indifference and a generalized military ineffectiveness that prevents resolution of the conflict on any terms. The vivid vignettes of combat and its aftermath portend a forever war, and the author highlights the impotence of grassroots solutions that render any deliverance ephemeral at best. Mealer's book is a quiet paean to the courage he has witnessed, and its final salute to the many proud people of Congo is as much eulogy as affirmation. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Review
“Mealer’s talent for detail, deftly rendered, lifts his material toward the sublime.”—Christian Science Monitor “[A] troubling expose of the brutalities suffered by those in war-racked Congo.”—Chicago Tribune “With vivid prose and compelling emotion…[Mealer] reports his own “creeping emotional atrophy” as he is repulsed and then spellbound by the violence and by the courageous people who struggled to make sense of the fighting.”—Booklist “A perceptive, empathetic, stomach-twisting presentation of the human condition during chaos…A quiet paean to the courage he has witnessed, and its final salute to ‘the many proud people of Congo’ is as much eulogy as affirmation.”—Publishers Weekly “Bryan Mealer has put his life on the line to bring us a story of terror and courage from the heart of Congo…Both as a journalist and as a reader, my hat’s off to Mealer.”—Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best book on the current situation in the Congo,
By
This review is from: All Things Must Fight To Live (Hardcover)
One of the best books on the curent situation in the Congo. A journalists journey to the heart of darkness with many interesting and strange insights and at times very gut wrenching read.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.6 out of 5 stars (15 customer reviews) 11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Eye-Opening,
By Christopher Berend - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: All Things Must Fight To Live (Hardcover)
Bryan Mealer brought to life a place that, sadly, most of us know little or care even less about. He takes far off characters in a far off war and gives them an easy familiarity. This book is not for the faint of heart--the war in Congo has killed millions through combat and disease, and Mealer does not shy away from its most brutal details. And yet, he does not revel in them either, as so many war correspondents haphazardly do. He simply writes what he sees. And what he sees is pretty amazing stuff. Highly recommended.
51 of 67 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
An incomplete, biased and unexamined account,
By Katherine C. Garrett - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: All Things Must Fight To Live (Hardcover)
Bryan Mealer has attempted to do the impossible: represent the suffering of a nation in the midst of war and for that I give him credit. However, as a White, Ameican middle class woman who lived in Eastern Congo in 2005-06, I find much of his book to be deeply problematic. This is not a historic account of the war; nor is it an attmept to unpack and examine the myriad factors that instigated the conflict and continue to cause unrest even now; rather, it seems to be one man's biased and often aggrandized account of his willingness to "risk his life" to bring us a litany of disconnected stories from "the heart of darkness." As a book, it is little more than a re-construction of Europeans as noble and technologcally-advanced and Congolese as savage and backward. This is an extremely dangerous myth to perpetuate via mainstream American media, a medium already saturated in representations of Africans as starving, disease-ridden and hopelessly corrupt. While the horror of the war is certainly a reality, Mealer ignores the complex political underpinnings which, if exposed in depth, would serve as a scathing indictment of countless Western governments, including our own. Gerard Prunier's seminal text on the Rwandan genocide is an example of what good war reporting can be. This book, on the other hand,is a sad reminder that the war in Congo DOES deserve press coverage. Just not the kind delivered here.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Personal Memoir Of A Humanitarian Catastrophe,
By David Donelson "Author of Weird Golf" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: All Things Must Fight To Live (Hardcover)
Bryan Mealer has penned a brutal memoir of his three years as a reporter in the Congo, three years when teenage gunboys roamed the countryside and city streets, when UN peacekeeping forces faced mystical leaders operating from jungle mountaintops, when rebel militias and government forces alike pillaged their own nation. It was a horrible time in the history of a country that has seen little else for the last hundred years.While Mealer writes about the bloody atrocities he witnessed, the real story he tells is about himself. He's drawn back to the Congo three times, apparently addicted to the extreme discomfort and random violence he endures. His travels cover nearly the entire country from the capital of Kinshasa to the mineral-rich southern provinces to the guerilla-infested eastern region where an alphabet-soup of militias, foreign armies, and UN forces fight a never-ending war of terror, rape, and mutilation. He rides a newly-reconstructed rail line and even follows Conrad's trail up the Congo River via barge. At one point, he and his adventure-junkie buddies take off through the jungle on bicycles. While Mealer tells us the names and stories of many Congolese he meets along the way, he never really gives much insight into them as anything other than victims. He says as much when he reflects on his bicycle journey: "...once in the jungle, my own basic needs and level of comfort had stood in the way of learning anything. I didn't even know my riders' last names or anything about their families. I'd simply been too exhausted and hungry to care. It wasn't my proudest moment, and even now, those last days on the trail leave a sting of regret." Still, All Things Must Fight To Live puts the reader close to the action and accurately reflects the aftermath of war and colonialism in one of the world's greatest humanitarian catastrophes. Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds: A Novel of Scandal, Love and Death in the Congo |
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