Anjan Sundaram’s “Stringer” (2013) is not very interesting. Subtitled ‘A Reporter’s Journey in the Congo’, it is at least as much about Mr Sundaram’s own personal journey as it is about the Congo. Written in three parts, the first and longest deals with his arrival and stay in Kinshasa, with a local family rather than in a five star hotel. Quite interesting, the local scene, but not interesting enough for over a hundred pages. The second part is the most interesting one, when he travels upcountry, first by barge and motor canoe on a failed trip to visit a friend’s expropriated piece of land, then by UN aircraft to Bunia, to ‘visit the war’. But here again, it is too much about the author, too little about Congo, let alone about ‘the war’. In the third part, Sundaram is back in Kinshasa, where he lives through the election and the subsequent unrest, consisting of fighting in the streets between several political factions. But it is not that he is ‘reporting from anarchy’ as the book cover wants us to believe; Sundaram is holed up in a factory of an Indian contact, cut off from the outside world, until things calm down again after three days. Uncomfortable, for sure, but we are not talking about a hero, here. Altogether, quite disappointing. ( )

I was kind of disappointed. It wasn't descriptive or emotional, so it was sort of caught between in boring-land. ( )

bookshelves: spring-2014, afr-congo, nonfiction, journalism, published-2013, radio-4, travel, autobiography-memoir
Recommended for: BBC Radio Listeners
Read from May 16 to 23, 2014

BOTW

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b043wvxd

BBC Description: Stringer is Anjan Sundaram's vivid account of self-discovery and danger in the heart of Africa. In 2005, at the age of 22, the decision to become a journalist takes Sundaram to Congo where he spends a year and a half cutting his teeth as a reporter for a news agency. With the 2006 elections approaching he immerses himself in the everyday life of this lawless and war torn country. This intense period takes him deep into the shadowy parts of Kinshasa, to the dense rain forest with an Indian businessman hunting for his fortune, and culminates in the historic and violent elections of 2006.

Episode 1: First impressions of Kinshasa, and an encounter with a group of orphaned children

Episode 2: A frightening encounter compels Anjan to re-double his efforts to find work as a reporter,

Episode 3: A journey along the River Congo leads to new insights for the journalist

Episode 4: Anjan Sundaram heads east towards the conflict and conducts an extraordinary interview.

Episode 5: Anjan observes the elections and is caught up in the disturbing aftermath.

Anjan Sundaram is an award-winning journalist who has reported from Africa and the Middle East for the New York Times and the Associated Press. He received a Reuters journalism award in 2006 for his reporting on Pygmy tribes in Congo's rain forest.

Read by Riz Ahmed who is best known for his work in film. He has starred in The Road to Guantanamo, Shifty, Four Lions, Ill Manors and The Reluctant Fundamentalist which he also read for Radio 4's Book at Bedtime.

Abridged by Richard Hamilton
Produced by Elizabeth Allard.

THE BUZZ ABOUT THIS BOOK:

ONE OF the most talked-about incidents at the Jaipur Literature Festival this year was the dismissal by British MP Kwasi Kwarteng of Anjan Sundaram’s decision to leave behind a cushy life in academia at 22 and travel to Congo to report on the civil war as just another case of a rich kid displaying only a voyeuristic interest in Africa. While the consensus among the chattering classes was that Kwarteng had been needlessly belligerent, it is possible to see his point of view: Sundaram had said that he went to Congo because, as he writes in Stringer, “I had lived in man’s genius for so long. I wanted to know our destructive capacities.” - The Rough Guide to Reporting

Bongo-Bongo in the Congo ( )

Into Africa

Stringer: A Reporter's Journey in the Congo

Anjan Sundaram was studying mathematics and headed for a job at Goldman Sachs when he decided he'd just had enough. Instead, he went to the Congo. There, with no experience, limited funds and only a spare room in the house of a Congolese family, Sundaram got a job as a stringer with The Associated Press and set out to work as a journalist in one of the most violent places on Earth. He chronicles his experiences in Stringer: A Reporter's Journey in the Congo (Doubleday, $25.95), including a risky trip upriver from Kinshasa to interview a warlord and his decision to stay to report on the elections and the disorder that erupted after. Sundaram is fascinating, especially because he seems so naive. This is really the only sort of book an outsider can write about the Congo, and it's done beautifully.

(Published in the Sacramento News & Review on 2/13/2014: http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/into-africa/content?oid=12743004) ( )