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In the Land of Magic Soldiers A Story of White and Black in West Africa Daniel Bergner 9780374266530 Books

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In the Land of Magic Soldiers A Story of White and Black in West Africa Daniel Bergner 9780374266530 Books

I read this book on the recommendation of a friend who knows how much I care about Africa, having lived there (in three different countries) for a total of seven years and written about it myself. Daniel Bergner's IN THE LAND OF MAGIC SOLDIERS could not be more different from my book HOW TO COOK A CROCODILE, because mine is about working with women -- the backbone of Africa -- in a peaceful country (Gabon). Nevertheless, I am deeply grateful to Bergner for his honest and insightful account of war-ravaged Sierra Leone. Africa is a huge and hugely complex puzzle, which the world has largely written off. Bergner's narrative of his two-year quest to learn the "truths" about Sierra Leone provides an important piece to that puzzle. His writing is brilliant, his willingness to see all points of view is heartening, and his candor is riveting.


Tags : In the Land of Magic Soldiers: A Story of White and Black in West Africa [Daniel Bergner] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <DIV><b>A chilling, beautifully written narrative of African war</b> Sierra Leone is the world's most war-ravaged country. There,Daniel Bergner,In the Land of Magic Soldiers: A Story of White and Black in West Africa,Farrar, Straus and Giroux,0374266530,General,Sierra Leone;History.,Sierra Leone;History;Civil War, 1991-2002.,AFRICA - HISTORY +,Africa - General,African American,Civil War, 1991-2002,Ethnic Studies - General,General Adult,History,History - General History,History Africa General,Non-Fiction,POLITICAL DISCONTENT AND VIOLENCE,POLITICAL SCIENCE General,Political Science,PoliticsInternational Relations,PoliticsIntl Relations,Sierra Leone,Social Science Ethnic Studies General,United States,West Africa,Civil War, 1991-

In the Land of Magic Soldiers A Story of White and Black in West Africa Daniel Bergner 9780374266530 Books Reviews

some good insight into the mentalities of the people of seirra leone and some interesting history. it's about a reality of today that compares to a reality of 2000 years ago in it's brutality and ignorance. the author tries to play up the black/white race issue a bit too much, i guess in effort to create controversy? i applause the information, the "reporting", but it definetly could have been edited and written better.
What a heartbreaking book this is. Sierra Leone at the time of this writing was painfully creeping out of a collapsed state, a nightmare world of omni-hostile gangs, rogue militias, soul-wringing atrocities the whole awful image of an imploded African society. As one interviewee says, the culture had been drawn down to zero. What was the cause? What could the solution be?
Author Bergner could easily have perpetrated a standard piece of parachute journalism on this wretched backwater sorespot, but he didn't. He spent some quantity time here, and followed developments. He writes with journalistic vividness which only sometimes strains for an elegaic tone. Most of the time his material supplies all the drama necessary.
We meet a missionary family, fired up with a purposeful vision for social justice. We meet them again some time later, after all their good works have been reduced by the civil war and general lawlessness to ashes, and with their last project, a school, threatened with abandonment. It's a heart-rending example of how so much of the West's very best altruistic efforts in Africa have been dashed to spray in the end.
We also meet victims of the guerillas' amputation squads. One, a man named Lamin, somehow kept his equanimity, while a compatriot who suffered the same horrible fate lapsed into catatonia. Lamin's impressions of New York while there to be fitted for prosthetic hands are especially interesting.
A detachment of British Marines, reassuringly determined and competent in comparison the Keystone Kops-like UN troops who had been held hostage by rebels, set to work restoring order in the capital and training the remnants of the national army. But is this rescue or re-colonialization? The question troubles few natives, but Bergner scrupulously takes note of those troubled few.
More problematic is an expatriate Rhodesian mercernary, fighting rebels with an old Soviet attack helicopter, and being none too careful about avoiding civilians. The "correct" attitude is to loathe him--yet his fighting in the field saves the capital, and his money-favoring among locals eases a lot of hurt that would otherwise go uneased.
Bergner candidly admits the psychic indigestion that the racial connotations of the whole ugly mess stir up within him. He protests to some natives who all but quote Kipling and Joseph Conrad at him, insisting that whites are fully as capable of the degradation happening there as the rebels and gangs have been. But in Sierra Leone in the Nineties, it is the missionaries and the British trying to salvage this country, and not the other way around, and Bergner records his creeped-out reaction when he entertains the idea that the self-deprecating natives may be right. Some otherwise astute Western observers are frequently guilty of denying Africans their full measure of humanity, of capacity for good and evil. In their view, the Africans are just a deterministic mass of victims of colonialism, symbols of Western sin, with no moral agency of their own. The natives Bergner quotes will be as kryptonite to such readers.
The Ghanaian scholar George Ayittey, in his book _Africa in Chaos_, deplored the vampiric kleptocracies that took hold in so many African countries after the end of colonialism. He proposed trying to reconstitute some of the pre-colonial tribal structures that had allowed for relatively peaceful conflict management. But how could this approach work in Sierra Leone, which was not only as artificial an entity as most other sub-Saharan countries but also an experimental one, like Liberia?
What could the solution be? No answers here. This is an impression of this woeful land, not a proposal for remedies. One can only hope that, with the presence of the British and more competent UN troops, the wounds will begin to heal. Everyone who only knows Sierra Leone from the terse wire reports filed under "In Other News" should read this book.
This book read well. I like the individual stories interspersed with the history of this troubled country. The stories of the Rhodesian mercenary, white American missionaries, Sierra Leonean amputee, and the medical student certainly were interesting. Whether I want to believe in a guerrilla soldier getting shot in the stomach or a person eating razor blades may be a stretch of the imagination.

The author recreates the terror and hatred of the Civil War. As he reminds us, much of sub Sahara Africa is in a downhill spiral, and the results in human terms is civil war, terror, tribalism, kleptocracy, and an early death to millions of Africans. Medically, there is little treatment for Africans of the many diseases rampant on the continent.

I liked this easy to read book. One reviewer raised the possiblity of this being fiction, but after reading similar stories of the Sierra Leone Civil War, I tend to doubt that accusation. A good, solid read.
I was there and everything Dan writes is true. Reality of war is horrible and people need to see that it is not a video game. Real people are suffering and dying for nothing.
The author takes the reader to another planet with this story of civil war in Sierra Leone. Each chapter seems to catch you unaware. Although one might expect to hear horror stories, each new retelling, as submitted by the actual victim or the person who committed the atrocities, brings the reader to a point of disbelief. Now I know what the term "gut-wrenching" actually means. In turns I was gasping or weeping or shaking my head as if in denial. This is the 21st Century on Planet Earth, but we are all living in absolute luxury compared to life in Sierra Leone. The author has done us a great service by writing about this country.
I read this book on the recommendation of a friend who knows how much I care about Africa, having lived there (in three different countries) for a total of seven years and written about it myself. Daniel Bergner's IN THE LAND OF MAGIC SOLDIERS could not be more different from my book HOW TO COOK A CROCODILE, because mine is about working with women -- the backbone of Africa -- in a peaceful country (Gabon). Nevertheless, I am deeply grateful to Bergner for his honest and insightful account of war-ravaged Sierra Leone. Africa is a huge and hugely complex puzzle, which the world has largely written off. Bergner's narrative of his two-year quest to learn the "truths" about Sierra Leone provides an important piece to that puzzle. His writing is brilliant, his willingness to see all points of view is heartening, and his candor is riveting.