I Brought the War with Me: Stories and Poems from the Front Line

· Random House
Ebook
304
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About this ebook

'An excellent anthology' Times Literary Supplement
'Remarkable: combines her exceptional experience as a war correspondent with selected poetry in an act of witness' ANDREW MOTION

I was standing outside an apartment block that had been split apart by a missile. The words of a poem came to me when I could no longer find my own.

In nearly four decades as a journalist covering conflict from Rwanda to Kosovo to Palestine, Channel 4 News International Editor Lindsey Hilsum has always carried a book of poetry. In Ukraine, she tweeted a poem a day, and people began to read, to share, to ask for more.

Here, Lindsey collects her favourite poems from ancient times to modern, by writers from all around the world. Alongside each, she recalls a memory from her own work, whether interviewing the warlords of Bosnia, meeting child soldiers in Uganda or giving testimony in Rwanda. Her prose reveals comic absurdity and astonishing courage, meaning and its absence, unexpected moments of love and the untold consequences that come long after most cameras disperse. She explores the pity of war – and its fatal attraction.

'Profound, revelatory, distressing and timely' CAROL ANN DUFFY
'Fantastic, beguiling and movingly profound' WILLIAM BOYD
'Brings us darkness and light in the most moving, magical way' CHRISTINA LAMB

About the author

Lindsey Hilsum is the International Editor for Channel 4 News. Her book, In Extremis: the Life of War Correspondent Marie Colvin won the 2019 James Tait Black Prize for biography. Recently she has reported on the war in Ukraine, Sudan and Israel/Gaza. She has covered the major conflicts and refugee movements of the past three decades, including Afghanistan, Syria, Mali, Iraq and Kosovo. From 2006-8 she was based in China, and in 1994 was the only English-speaking foreign correspondent in Rwanda as the genocide started. She has won many awards, including the Royal Television Society Journalist of the Year and the Royal Geographical Society Patron's Medal. She contributes regularly to newspapers and literary magazines. Her first book was Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution.

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