17 - A Season in Hell, by Robert R. Fowler, 317 pages, Harper Collins, 2011
WHY I PICKED IT: Recommended by Chris Houston
ELAPSED TIME: 2 weeks
RATING: Very Good
Robert R. Fowler is a long time bureaucrat with the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) and the United Nations (at one time serving as Canada's representative on the UN Security Council). In 2009 he was sent to Niger as a UN envoy to negotiate peace between the government and rebel forces... instead he (along with a colleague) was kidnapped by Al Qaeda and held for 130 days.
The story is gripping - The act of being kidnapped, being transported at high speeds through the Sahara, the food, the health problems, the worries and the stresses, and ultimately their release. Every page and section of the book draws you in and tells the story in vivid detail. Alone, this would have been a good book.
What moves this book into Very Good status is his Epilogue. From pages 291 to 317 , he describes what was going on in the background. He pieces together the negotiations, the power struggles between the DFAIT, the RCMP, and the UN. He calls out nations who say that they "never negotiate with terrorists," and who called out Canada for doing so... and shows their hypocrisy as they clearly have done so. He calls out weaknesses within the DFAIT and the obnoxiousness by members of the RCMP towards his wife. That chapter is truly fantastic. I want to read an entire book of that type of detail and scathing analysis... That book would be Required Reading.
This blog is a simple review of every book that I read... For all books I’ll tell you why I picked it, how long it took me to read it, and give it a rating (burn it, not good, meh, good, very good, and required reading). I ask (encourage?) all readers of my blog to post their thoughts of any of the books in my comments :). Thanks!
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