Janine Di Giovanni – författare

_______________‘A moving book by one of our generation's finest foreign correspondents' - Daily Telegraph‘A terrifying account, soberly written ... Presents a stunning portrait of the anarchy, cruelty and overwhelming confusion of contemporary wars' - Independent‘Janine di Giovanni is superb - an extraordinarily brave war correspondent and a wonderful writer as well. What a combination!' - William Shawcross_______________The remarkable story of a woman on the frontline giving an extraordinary, personal account of the Balkan warsAward-winning journalist Janine di Giovanni spent much of the 1990s observing the cycles of violence and vengeance from inside Balkan cities and villages, refugee camps and makeshift hospitals. This was a conflict that raised challenging questions: what causes neighbours, whose families have lived peacefully for centuries, to turn with mindless brutality against one another? How do we measure the difference between bravery and cowardice in a conflict so morally ill-defined? What becomes of survivors when the fabric of an age-old community is destroyed? Searching for answers, di Giovanni brings the reality of war into focus: children dying from lack of medicine, women driven to despair and madness by their experiences in paramilitary rape camps and soldiers numbed by and inured to the atrocities they committed. In Madness Visible she paints an indelible portrait of the Balkans under siege and shows the true - human - cost of war.

_______________'Few writers can match her evocations of individual suffering in wartime.' - Newsweek'A gifted and humane reporter with a novelist's eye for detail.' - Literary Review'One of our generation's finest foreign correspondents.' - Daily Telegraph'Di Giovanni is superb - an extraordinarily brave war correspondent and a wonderful writer as well.' - William Shawcross_______________A collection of essays from the frontline from the acclaimed war correspondentAt the start of her career Janine di Giovanni was advised, 'Write about the small voices, the people who can't write about themselves.'For over fifteen years, she has been doing exactly that. From a near-abandoned hospital in Chechnya to bombed-out Tora Bora in Afghanistan, from Saddam Hussein's derelict palace in Baghdad to the inner-city barrios of Kingston, Jamaica, di Giovanni has covered almost every embattled place in the world and the people caught in its midst. Like Myriem, who lives on the West Bank, but can no longer use her farm because it falls on the Israeli side of the security fence; and Sia, one of the child soldiers of Sierra Leone, who talks blithely of shedding her violent past; and Abdul, who was imprisoned by the Taliban at seventeen for not wearing a beard.The pieces collected here begin with Algeria in 1998 and end with Iraq in 2005. They are vivid, raw and impassioned - and they make war terrifyingly real.

Once in a decade comes an account of war that promises to be a classic.

**Longlisted Moore Prize for Human Rights Writing**'A tragic portrait of a disappearing world, created with passion and literary grace' SALMAN RUSHDIE‘Janine di Giovanni is a humane and persistent witness’ HISHAM MATAR'Profoundly moving' MARK TULLY_______________________The Vanishing reveals the plight and possible extinction of Christian communities across Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine after 2,000 years in their historical homeland.Some of the countries that first nurtured and characterized Christianity - along the North African Coast, on the Euphrates and across the Middle East and Arabia - are the ones in which it is likely to first go extinct. Christians are already vanishing. We are past the tipping point, now tilted toward the end of Christianity in its historical homeland. Christians have fled the lands where their prophets wandered, where Jesus Christ preached, where the great Doctors and hierarchs of the early church established the doctrinal norms that would last millennia.From Syria to Egypt, the cities of northern Iraq to the Gaza Strip, ancient communities, the birthplaces of prophets and saints, are losing any living connection to the religion that once was such a characteristic feature of their social and cultural lives.In The Vanishing, Janine di Giovanni has combined astonishing journalistic work to discover the last traces of small, hardy communities where ancient rituals are quietly preserved amid 360 degree threats. Full of faith and hope, di Giovanni's riveting personal stories make a unique act of pre-archeology: the last chance to visit the living religion before all that will be left are the stones of the past.

Winner of the Hay Festival Award for ProseWinner of the 2016 IWMF Courage in Journalism AwardShortlisted for the New York Public Library's Helen Bernstein Excellence in Journalism AwardShortlisted for the 2017 Moore Prize for Non-Fiction Literature In May of 2012, Janine di Giovanni travelled to Syria, marking the beginning of a long relationship with the country, as she began reporting from both sides of the conflict, witnessing its descent into one of the most brutal, internecine conflicts in recent history. Drawn to the stories of ordinary people caught up in the fighting, Syria came to consume her every moment, her every emotion.Speaking to those directly involved in the war, di Giovanni relays the personal stories of rebel fighters thrown in jail at the least provocation; of children and families forced to watch loved ones taken and killed by regime forces with dubious justifications; and the stories of the elite, holding pool parties in Damascus hotels, trying to deny the human consequences of the nearby shelling.Delivered with passion, fearlessness and sensitivity, The Morning They Came for Us is an unflinching account of a nation on the brink of disintegration, charting an apocalyptic but at times tender story of life in a jihadist war – and an unforgettable testament to human resilience in the face of devastating, unimaginable horrors.