Children Are Diamonds: An African Apocalypse

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This is not the Africa of Isak Dinsen or Joy Adamson. This is the Africa of civil wars and tribal massacres, where the Lord's Resistance Army drafts child-soldiers after forcing them to kill their parents and eat their hearts. The aid workers who voluntarily subject themselves to life here are a breed apart. Meet Hickey, an American in is late 30s,

Reviews

The ferocious lucidity of Hoaglands language and the depth of his characters as they navigate political complexity, hellish violence, endless fear, persistent desire, and desperate calculations of survival make for a shattering tale of epic suffering, bitter irony, and miraculous flashes of beauty.Booklist

A gritty cinematic story wrapped in brilliant African detail, mesmerizing, from the unforgettable opening scene, on to the end. Quite simply, a masterpiece.Garrison Keillor

Edward Hoagland has long been both a resolute explorer and a preternaturally versatile writer. Hes written more nonfiction than fiction, but what he brings to this terrifying novelI mean, in addition to his humane vision and exquisite craftis everything he has learned (as Graham Greene learned) from the world. The range and depth of Hoaglands travel books, and of his many remarkable essays, are on display in this novel set in Africa, where killing and sexual brutality are juxtaposed with humanitarian care. Hoaglands aid workers are damaged souls, but they havent quit. In a world of unbearable inhumanity, what comes across in this intrepid novel is the power of doing the right thingeven, or especially, in a moral outback.John Irving

Children Are Diamonds is the latest addition to a remarkable collection of books about the war in southern Sudan that evokes the time and place with haunting imagery. Hoagland aptly captures the lives of Western do-gooders and opportunists lured by the adrenaline rush of Africa, evoking the closeness, and the randomness, of death in a war zone.New York Times
The ferocious lucidity of Hoaglands language and the depth of his characters as they navigate political complexity, hellish violence, endless fear, persistent desire, and desperate calculations of survival make for a shattering tale of epic suffering, bitter irony, and miraculous flashes of beauty.Booklist

A gritty cinematic story wrapped in brilliant African detail, mesmerizing, from the unforgettable opening scene, on to the end. Quite simply, a masterpiece.Garrison Keillor

Edward Hoagland has long been both a resolute explorer and a preternaturally versatile writer. Hes written more nonfiction than fiction, but what he brings to this terrifying novelI mean, in addition to his humane vision and exquisite craftis everything he has learned (as Graham Greene learned) from the world. The range and depth of Hoaglands travel books, and of his many remarkable essays, are on display in this novel set in Africa, where killing and sexual brutality are juxtaposed with humanitarian care. Hoaglands aid workers are damaged souls, but they havent quit. In a world of unbearable inhumanity, what comes across in this intrepid novel is the power of doing the right thingeven, or especially, in a moral outback.John Irving

Children Are Diamonds is the latest addition to a remarkable collection of books about the war in southern Sudan that evokes the time and place with haunting imagery. Hoagland aptly captures the lives of Western do-gooders and opportunists lured by the adrenaline rush of Africa, evoking the closeness, and the randomness, of death in a war zone.New York Times

Author Bio

Edward Hoagland: Edward Hoagland has written more than twenty books in sixty years, including travel memoirs (Alaskan TravelsArcade 2012, 2013), essay collections, and novels. He worked in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus while attending Harvard, and later traveled the world from Yemen to Antarctica to Assam, writing for national magazines such as Harper's and Esquire. He has received numerous literary awards, and taught at ten colleges and universities. A native New Yorker, he now divides his time between Martha's Vineyard and a farmhouse in the mountains of northern Vermont.