Echoes of Violence: Letters from a War Reporter (Human Rights and Crimes against Humanity) (Hardcover)

by Carolin Emcke (Author) "I have been back for two weeks..." (more)
Key Phrases: Northern Iraq, New York, Saddam Hussein (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist
Through her personal letters to friends, Der Spiegel war correspondent Emcke offers a perspective on war beyond journalistic dispatches. Emcke draws on letters she started writing to friends in 1999 while covering the aftermath of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. The letters were meant to provide a catharsis for Emcke, a way of coping with the horror she witnessed that could not be expressed in standard journalism. Trying to sort out for herself the level of violence and barbarity she was witnessing, Emcke detailed Serbian troops confiscating from Albanians every document evidencing citizenship and identification; the sight of a decaying corpse left sitting in a bombed-out house; a girl so traumatized by death that she spouts endless nonsense words; and a displaced attorney helping rape victims, who speaks of the simple victory of survival when you are the object of genocide. Emcke describes the moral and political delicacy of reporting on a war from one side or the other and the overwhelming questions of humanity and inhumanity found in the midst of war. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"... combines gripping, dramatic stories with philosophical reflection on the nature of violence." -- Levon Sevunts

"...combines gripping narrative with philosophic reflection on the meaning of war." -- Kathy English, The Globe & Mail

"As fragmented as Emcke's experiences, they are a compelling blend of narrative and analysis, description and reflection." -- Lorien Kaye, The Age

"I read her extraordinary book in consternation, angered by what she describes, distressed by my own helplessness." -- Kate McLoughlin, TLS

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 340 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (February 5, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691129037
• ISBN-13: 978-0691129037
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,127,487 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not your usual war reporter, March 25, 2007

By	me/myself (NYC) - See all my reviews

Although Carolin Emcke's compelling new book is subtitled "Letters from a War Reporter," she fits none of the stereotypes that the rubric of war reporter suggests. Nowhere in her writing does the reader find the cynical, hard-bitten media professional who -- writing on short deadlines for a largely uninformed audience -- has little interest in exploring complexity or challenging the conventional wisdom.

Emcke's letters, written first for her friends and later compiled for publication, give the back story that is left out of most international news reporting. Reading them, one sees a thoughtful but utterly human person at work -- not an omniscient narrator, but someone with emotions, opinions, subjectivity, and humor. Emcke describes herself as a witness, and some of the most compelling passages in the book reveal her grappling with the difficulty of being a faithful witness to situations that are in some sense indescribable.

Emcke has an eye for the telling detail. Describing a hotel in Prishtina, Kosovo, for example, she notes on a visit in 2000 that "the porn magazine in the desk drawer offers 'phone sex with mature women' in a country with no functioning telephone lines." (A few years later human rights observers documented the role of NATO troops and UN police in encouraging the rapid growth of sex-trafficking and forced prostitution in Kosovo.)

Unlike reporters who cover local or national beats -- who can assume that their readership shares a history and culture with the people described, or is at least familiar with that history and culture -- journalists covering foreign crises have to do more than report the facts: they have to translate between worlds. Emcke's moving book shows that this role of translator requires sensitivity, empathy, and understanding, qualities she has in abundance.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Brillant at times, but not detailed enough, August 2, 2007

By	Stefan Isaksson "www.stefanisaksson.se" (Malmoe, Sweden) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

From time to time Echoes of Violence is a very interesting book, and when it's at its best the reader will have an extremely difficult time trying not to keep on reading forever and ever.

But alas, this only happens on a few occasions. And that's too bad, because there is no reason whatsoever to think that Carolin Emcke comes even close to being a bad writer. A German journalist with a thorough experience in doing war journalism, Emcke has spent much of her professional career in different war zones all around the world, and she writes in a style that's actually both emotional and clear-sighted at the same time. Not only that, she also offers such detailed background analyses that it never becomes necessary for the reader to have any deeper knowledge about the area she's in or the events leading up the particular conflict (though it's obviously not a disadvantage if the reader indeed does have this knowledge).

Most important of all, though, is the simple fact that she never loses touch with the human aspects of her story.

And that's not much of a surprise, really. After all, it's this humaneness that permeates the entire book and prompted her to start putting the stories into words, since the book is based on letters she began writing to some of her closest friends after visiting Kosovo in 1999 and becoming a witness to the horrendous suffering caused by all the sickening ethnic cleansing. In order to come to terms with what she's seen she decided to put it all into words, and Echoes of Violence is the end result.

However, just because it happens to be quite a touching testimony detailing the stupidity of mankind doesn't mean it's a brilliant book. Simple because it contains too few highly detailed descriptions of war, misery, suffering and revolting battle scenes. Perhaps this criticism sounds creepy, but the thing is, without such gory descriptions it's impossible to get some sort of understanding of all the awful scenarios that Emcke finds herself in. Some of the chapters are in fact quite boring.

Still, this doesn't mean it's not worth taking a closer look at. After all, when it's good it's REALLY good.