Audiobook and e-book reviews: non-fiction from Anjan Sundaram, Victoria Young and Chris Easterly
Journalism under a dictatorship, the truth about motherhood and a memoir of a divorce
by Anjan Sundaram
Doubleday (e-book)
Imagine the futility of teaching journalism in a country where the only news allowed is propaganda and the head of the journalists association is a former police officer. Worse, it’s where journalists who try to give different views are imprisoned or worse. Anjan Sundaram finds just such a media landscape in Rwanda, where, strangely, he holds workshops to train reporters. He tells his tale through students such as Gibson, a reporter who had been working for the country’s main independent paper (later closed) and who tries to establish his own magazine, which would write around the official narratives. But still the authorities catch up with him and instil such fear that he flees his homeland. Bad News also underscores the harm wreaked by Western governments providing aid to the regime of Paul Kagame, thus supporting his dictatorship. It is not the first time they’ve supported repression in Rwanda, Sundaram writes. The book ends with a long list of journalists who have “disappeared” or otherwise “faced difficulties” after criticising the Rwandan government. In a country where authorities could make anyone confess to any crime, Sundaram states, the theatre and fear of dictatorship have escalated. Sound familiar?
edited by Victoria Young