The Anglo-Ethiopian Society
Book Club - ONLINE - Borderlines
Michela Wrong
Tuesday 16th April 2024
Online event starting at 19:00 GMT - Public event (all welcome to join).
Note - Register for the event on Eventbrite and you'll be emailed a Zoom link shortly before the event.
For this book club we're going to discuss Borderlines by Michela Wrong.
The debut novel by a British writer with more than two decades of African experience– a compelling courtroom drama and a gritty, aromatic evocation of place, inspired by recent events.
British lawyer Paula Shackleton is mourning a lost love when a small man in a lemon-coloured suit accosts her over breakfast in a Boston hotel. Winston Peabody represents the African state of North Darrar, embroiled in a border arbitration case with its giant neighbour. He needs help with the hearings in The Hague, Paula needs to forget the past.
She flies to the state’s capital determined to lose herself in work, but soon discovers that even jobs taken with the purest intentions can involve moral compromise. Taking testimony in scorching refugee camps, delving into the colonial past, she becomes increasingly uneasy about her role. Budding friendships with a scarred former rebel and an idealistic young doctor whittle away at her pose of sardonic indifference, until Paula finds herself taking a step no decent lawyer should ever contemplate.
Michela Wrong has been writing about Africa for more than twenty years. In this taut legal thriller, rich with the Horn of Africa’s colours and aromas, she probes the motives underlying Western engagement with the continent, questioning the value of universal justice and exploring how history itself is forged. Above all her first novel is the story of a young woman’s anguished quest for redemption.
As a Reuters correspondent based in first Cote d'Ivoire and former Zaire, Michela Wrong covered the turbulent events of the mid 1990s, including the fall of Mobutu Sese Seko and Rwanda's postgenocide period. She then moved to Kenya, where she became Africa correspondent for the Financial Times. In 2000 she published her first non-fiction book, In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz, the story of Mobutu. Her second non-fiction work, I Didn't Do it for You, focused on the Red Sea nation of Eritrea. Her third, It's Our Turn to Eat, tracked the story of Kenyan whistleblower John Githongo. Do Not Disturb, which came out in 2021, is a scathing assessment of Rwanda under President Paul Kagame.
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Borderlines by Michela Wrong Publisher : Fourth Estate, 2016 ISBN : 9780008123017 (paperback) UK RRP £9.99 |