To Asmara

Book excerpt: A disillusioned reporter joins three fellow Westerners on a journey of discovery through the raging fires of a brutal East African conflict With his own life in flux, Timothy Darcy, an Australian journalist, finds escape in the ongoing turmoil of Eritrea. Entering the war-torn East African region with three Western strangers on missions of their own—Christine, a young Frenchwoman searching for her lost cinematographer father; Lady Julia, an aging British feminist; and Mark Henry, an American aid worker whose motives are masked in shadow—Darcy is plunged into the center of a twenty-five-year-long conflict between Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie’s army and Eritrean guerillas. Witnessing scenes of brutality, starvation, and oppression as they venture ever deeper into the true heart of darkness, the dispassionate reporter and his companions will never be the same. Based on his own firsthand experiences in Africa, Thomas Keneally, the acclaimed Man Booker Prize–winning author of Schindler’s List, delivers a powerful and profoundly moving novel of war, injustice, commitment, courage, and self-discovery set amid the horrors and tragedy of the vicious Eritrean conflict.