I just read Antony Loyd's 'Another Bloody Letter'.
'Another Bloody Letter' is Antony's second book. The first being 'My War Gone By I Miss It So'. Both books are sequential memoirs of his life as a war correspondent in Bosnia, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq and Sierra Leone. He writes with experience from within the thick of battle to the raw devastation that seems to exist forever after in these places.
Both books also chronicle his parallel life as a heroin addict. He places himself clearly in centre of both books, and in a lesser writers hands this would be a problem. But Antony is such a skilled and open observer it is through his honest but fallible character that you breach the boundary to a unique empathy for the subjects he writes about.
In 'Another Bloody Love Letter' he drills even closer to the dark heart of his work by traveling to Sierra Leone to examine the circumstances surrounding the death of his close friend and fellow journalist Kurt Schork. In doing so he finds a little clarity on what draws some men closer and closer to the spectacle and sport of violence.
Antony writes beautifully, with great warmth and humour. He can detail in almost romantic prose the multitude of landscapes he travels through and then with great depreciating humour describe the assorted characters he meets. He draws you in and then confronts you with the bare facts. He positions himself and you the reader on the side of humanity but with the abyss of evil inches from where we tread. It is powerful stuff. This is real writing; dispatches from the hinterlands and killing fields of the modern age.
T
Go here to read more and purchase -
http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/biography/0,,2052256,00.html
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Another-Bloody-Love-Letter-Anthony/dp/0755314794
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