I Didn't Do It For You: How The World Betrayed A Small African Nation - Hardcover

Wrong, Michela

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060780924 ISBN 13: 9780060780920

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2005

Synopsis

A critical exposé of the impact of colonialism and power politics on the African nation of Eritrea contends that the small country endured decades of conflict and occupation only to be exploited by powerful outside nations. By the author of In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz. 25,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

‘Contemporary history on the grand scale. I was entertained, informed and angered. Wrong has given us another essential contribution to the post-colonial scramble for Africa.’ John le Carre

‘Vivid, penetrating, wonderfully detailed. Michela Wrong has written the biography of a nation and more – she has excavated the very heart and soul of the Eritrean people and their country.' Aminatta Forna

‘If you thought Eritrea was some exotic flower you heard mentioned on a gardening programme this book will tell you something different. It tells the tale of a small group of Africans so despised and trampled by successive foreign occupations that they fought back and after 30 years of war, they became a nation. It is an astounding story packed with tales of the worst – and the best – of human behaviour.’ Richard Dowden, President of the Royal African Society

'This is a wonderful, readable and illuminating book. Michela Wrong is an enormously talented writer...thoroughly researched and deeply engaging and honest.' Clare Short – New Statesman

Praise for ‘I Didn’t Do it for You’:

'I found it engrossing, vividly written in the style of the best thrillers, while portraying real-life dramas and characters larger than life. It brought to life all the cruelties and and distortions of the cold war in Africa, as seen from a helpless victim-country, with its stories of grotesque interventions by Americans and Russians and the excesses of the African leaders. But it's also thoroughly well-informed, and I've read nothing that's told me as much about either Eritrea or Ethiopia. It should become the standard work on the region.' Anthony Sampson

Praise for In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz:

‘A stylish account of the absurd as well as the tragic.’ Sunday Times

‘A brilliant account of Africa’s most extraordinary dictator told with wry wit and delicious irony... this book will become a classic.’
The Economist

‘Michela Wrong made the so-called 'Heart of Darkness' much less opaque to me when I visited the Congo. She can do the same for you if you read this brave and witty book.’
Christopher Hitchens

‘Michela Wrong nimbly balances absurdity and outrage in her portrait of Mobutu Sese Seko and the wreckage he visited – with steady Western sponsorship – on the country he called Zaire. Her book is charged with pity and terror, and with the sort of sustaining humour that she rightly admires in Mobutu’s former subjects.’
Philip Gourevitch, author of We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We will be Killed with Our Families

About the Author:

As a foreign correspondent for Reuters news agency. Michela Wrong began her career reporting on papal pronouncements in Rome and fashion collections in Paris. She later moved to Africa, where she spent six years covering events across the continent for Reuters, the BBC and the Financial Times. She is now based in London.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0060780924
• ISBN 13: 9780060780920
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 432