Wow! eBook
The Night Wanderers: Uganda's Children and the Lord's Resistance Army
Author(s): Wojciech Jagielski (Author)
- Publisher: Old Street Publishing
- Publication Date: 22 May 2012
- Language: English
- Print length: 320 pages
- ISBN-10: 1908699086
- ISBN-13: 9781908699084
Book Description
Each night during the civil war in northern Uganda, tens of thousands of children headed for the city centres, hoping to avoid capture by the Lord’s Resistance Army — the infamous army led by Joseph Kony, and itself composed largely of kidnapped children.
The Night Wanderers masterfully evokes the postwar landscape of a country ravaged by decades of violence. It is a country of children who have been abducted from their homes and forced to kill their parents, brothers and sisters; children who, even after they have escaped the LRA, carry the weight of their own acts of murder on their shoulders as they try to return to normal life. Through their stories, the author weaves the wider history of a beautiful but blood-soaked nation, from the end of British overrule through Idi Amin’s brutal dictatorship up to today’s precarious peace.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Evening Standard
‘Jagielski succeeds exquisitely in capturing the haunted atmosphere of Acholi-land, the swathe of Uganda north of the White Nile that Joseph Kony still considers his home . . . few writers have managed to muster the level of patience and empathy that suffuses Jagielski’s account. Nor have they matched him in conjuring Acholi-land’s sense of place: its angry storms, sweeping savannah, and rivers where spiteful water ghosts will drown even the most hardened guerrillas if they cross without removing their boots . . . wonderful’
‘There is no better book about the recent history of Uganda’
‘Extraordinary … Jagielski paints masterful portraits of messianic guerrilla leaders and mad dictators, but unforgettable ones of stone-faced child rebels who have been forced to kill and maim, and in the process have lost the ability to laugh, cry, or even enjoy ice cream’
‘A literary masterpiece’
‘A stunning and beautiful book … Jagielski has scaled the heights of reportage’
‘Jagielski’s book sets new standards for gritty reporting’
