Product Description

'When seven Burundian paratroopers booted down the door of my hotel room and arrested me, I was wearing nothing but a towelling dressing-gown. With angry movements of their Kalashnikovs, they gestured to me to get dressed. What, I wondered in that long, slow-motion second before the fear kicked in, do you wear to your own execution? Would the Gap jeans do one more day?' In the summer of 1994 Christian Jennings arrived in Rwanda with an almost impossible mission: he had five days to track down the army officers and government ministers responsible for the slaughter of 850,000 people and persuade them to participate in a TV documentary about their crimes. He had $15,000 taped to his thigh, a satellite phone, thirty feet of rope, 18 litres of mineral water and a good command of French. Nothing in his past prepared him for the three and a half years that followed.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #871914 in Books
• Published on: 2001-02-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Christian Jennings is not a man to rest on his laurels. Not content with the rigours of the French Foreign Legion (documented in his first book, A Mouthful of Rocks, he flew to Rwanda in August 1994 with a rucksack of provisions, The Day of the Jackal, and a self-confessed ignorance of the country beyond the knowledge that 850,000 people had just been slaughtered in brutal acts of genocide. Also, he had a television producer on her way who wanted to find the people responsible within the five-day span of her trip. Apart from the miraculous completion of that programme, the other thing to emerge from this immersion into the landscape of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, was a fascination with Central Africa that saw Jennings return again and again. He was to report for Sunday Telegraph and Reuters in Rwanda, its sibling-in-horror Burundi, and the former Zaire with fearful bravery, but in the impressive Across the Red River he navigates the territory between reportage and memoir. Cleverly matching his learning curve to the reader's, he moves from his virtual ignorance of Rwanda and its mesh of tragedy to a deeper understanding of the weave and durability of that net, achieved with a flowing and refreshing candour. If there are two lines of war journalism, with writers such as Michael Ignatieff providing a more intellectual overview from the hills, Christian Jennings is on the frontline with souls such as Maggie O'Kane, Eve-Ann Prentice and Anthony Loyd. As with the latter's My War Gone By, I Miss It So, Jennings is able to unbridle his sense of self to stirring effect and show the mundane tedium as well as the brutal tension of reporting from, and surviving in, war. Occasionally angry, more often darkly funny, his book proves an unsettling yet riveting critique of the unimaginable effects of genocide, those who feed off its corpse and the few, like Jennings, who live to open our eyes. --David Vincent

From the Publisher
A terrifying account of the scariest places on earth
Across the Red River is a devastating book by a man who has seen the worst that humanity can do and lived to tell the tale. Genocide, the self-regarding follies of the UN and the aid industry, the duplicity of Western governments, the complexities of Central African politics – all are confronted in a gripping and – at times – funny way. Among the enthusiastic reviews:

"A very brave book … In amongst the horror, he paints hilarious portraits of the international media, including a ludicrous vegan TV producer, a woman so self-obsessed that she finds it difficult to understand why vegan food is difficult to find in the middle of the Rwandan genocide. Jennings is also a wry observer of himself, his weakness for strong drink and unobtainable women, plus the deep fear of being killed which separates him , along with most normal people, from the war junkies among international reporters … Jennings has starkly documented the greatest humanitarian disaster since the Nazi Holocaust in readable and surprisingly humorous prose" – The BBC’s Gavin Esler, Daily Mail

"Jennings, an accomplished anecdotalist, manages to combine terrifying accounts of his experiences trapped in firefights and getting slung out of both Rwanda and Burundi with a hilarious ear for dialogue. But he is no less angry at what was done – and not done – in Burundi, where a civil war fought non-stop since 1993 has claimed at least 250,000 lives … [goes] a long way to explain why Africa is a continent in crisis" – Sam Kiley, The Times

" … notable for the only in-depth account of events in Burundi, where the Tutsi-Hutu hatred was even deeper and more intractable than in neighbouring Rwanda, with killings every bit as brutal … The account of the appalling cowardice, blindness and venality of the UN agencies there makes salutary reading" – Fred Bridgland, Scotsman

About the Author
SALES POINTS Across the Red River is an epic account of the terror and beauty of Central Africa, both moving and harrowing in its detail, and frequently appallingly funny In the tradition of Anyone Here Been Raped and Speaks English and We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families '[A] remarkable and important book' Scotsman 'Jennings rips open the baffling politics behind one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century' FHM '[With an] eye for detail and a novelist's ear for dialogue ... Christian Jennings has starkly documented the greatest humanitarian disaster since the Nazi holocaust in readable and surprisingly humorous prose' Daily Mail 'Jennings broad-brush pastiche [goes] a long way to explain why Africa is a continent in crisis' The Times

Customer Reviews

Personal account but still very good
What I particularly like about Jennings' book is that he also provides an account of the atrocities being committed in neighbouring Burundi as well. As a rule, it seems that whatever happens in one country, has almost always a negative impact on the other. For example, we know the Hutu extremists murdered around 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus, but it is interesting to note that in Burundi the opposite is occurring, although to a far lesser degree (the Burundian Army formed almost entirely of Tutsis persecuting and murdering Hutu peasants).

I myself prefer books which are objective historical accounts, rather than personal ones, but Jennings' book is still a very good book. I recommend reading Gerard Prunier's "Rwanda in Crisis", along with this one.

brilliantly observed
having read Cristain jennings earlier days in the foreign legion, it was interesting to see what he had been up to since then, and Across the Red River demonstrates a leap forward in his writing.
In a similiar vein to My War Gone By (I Miss It So), this book is very honest, in as much as we can take the authors bias into account. The book covers Jennings days as a journalist covering events in central africa throughout a particuliarly bloody and chaotic period, genocide civil wars refuggee camps and so on.
Although hesitant to call this gonzo journalism, its imposiible not to draw parallels with Salvador and the previously mentioned MWGBIMIS.
The personal elemnt weaves nicely throughout the amzing events which are unfolding around the author, and the perspective he provides is incredibly insightful, The various AID and NGO agencies present in Rwanda and Burundi come across as more ainding and abetting and they dont come out of this in a favorable light to say the least.

Across the Red River: Rwanda, Burundi & the Heart of Darknes
Amazing book. gives detailed but personel account of stories behind the madness of the great lake region of central africa.