"Originally published in India by Penguin Books India, New Delhi" [2013]--Title page verso.
Anjan Sundaram Books
Anjan Sundaram is an award-winning journalist whose work delves deeply into the intricate relationship between journalism and authoritarianism. Through incisive writing, he explores the challenges faced by reporters in dictatorial regimes, revealing the fragility of truth in perilous environments. Sundaram's style is marked by its directness and empathetic portrayal of human stories at the heart of political upheaval. His reportage offers a critical lens on geopolitics and an urgent call for the preservation of press freedom.
An award-winning journalist courageously reveals the personal cost of war reporting, vividly recalling his dangerous assignment and confronting its devastating impact on his family. After ten years reporting from central Africa, Anjan Sundaram is living a quiet life in Canada with his wife and new-born. But when preparations for genocide emerge in the Central African Republic, he is suddenly torn between his duty to his family, and his moral responsibility to expose the conflict. Soon he is travelling through the CAR, driven by a possible spy--discovering ransacked villages and locals fleeing imminent massacre, fielding offers of mined gold, and hearing of soldiers who steal schoolbooks for cigarette paper. When he refuses to return home, journeying instead into a rebel stronghold, he learns that there is no going back to the life he has left behind. Breakup illuminates the personal price paid by those bearing witness on the frontlines of humanitarian crimes across the globe. This brilliantly introspective, strikingly grounded account of perilous warzones and inner turmoil is sure to become a modern classic.
