Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures): True Stories From A Warzone - Softcover

Thomson, Andrew; Postlewait, Heidi; Cain, Kenneth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0091901642 ISBN 13: 9780091901646

Publisher: Ebury Press, 2005

Synopsis

In the early 1990s three young people attracted to the ambitious global peacekeeping work of the UN cross paths in Cambodia. Andrew strives for a better world through his life-saving work as a doctor. Heidi, a social worker, is in need of a challenge and a paycheck, and Ken is fresh from Harvard and brimful of idealism. As their stories interweave through the years, from Rwanda, Bosnia and Somalia to Haiti, the trio reveal a world of witnessed atrocities, primal fear, desperate loneliness and base desires. They fend off terror and futility with revelry, humour and sex; ask hard questions about the world order America has created, the true power of the UN, and whether there is any possibility for change.

This is a startling celebration of the power of humour and friendship, of the limits of human compassion, and the need for a warm body and a cold beer during a Condition Echo lockdown. A book that shows the human cost of global politics and the tragic truth that wars are much more avoidable than our governments would ever admit. A brilliant, provocatively funny and fast moving book.

About this title

Review:

"Heart wrenching stuff" (Metro)

"Vividly told and this book is all the more engaging because its perspective is personal before it is political" (Daily Mail)

"These three voices from the world's front line are personal, these three characters from global ground zero are fallible; their youth and idealism, faults and failures, and triumphs and tears, all work to humanise recent history and ring it home for a reckoning." (Saturday Times)

"It is impossible not to admire the authors both for doing their work for so long, and being able to find strength and vision to recall the happiness and the horror. This is a powerful, humane and important book" (Waterstones Books Quarterly)

"This is in every sense a hell of a good book, a powerful testament of the limits of peacekeeping in today's war zone - acutely observed, and told with astonishing immediacy" (Philip Gourevitch author of We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families)

From the Publisher:

Set in the world's most hostile war zones, this is the powerful and utterly unforgettable memoir of three UN workers' struggle to make a difference

About this edition

• Publisher: Ebury Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0091901642
• ISBN 13: 9780091901646
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352