Book Review: James Maskalyk, Six months in Sudan

Charles R. Larson, Professor of Literature at American University, Washington, D.C, reviews James Maskalyk, Six Months in Sudan: A Young Doctor in a War-Torn Village (2009). He calls it 'a disturbing and utterly brilliant book'.

Sometimes you start writing one book and end up writing another. Nowhere is this more apparent than in James Maskalyk’s painfully honest account of his six months as an emergency physician in a remote area of Sudan. Answering the call for Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), Maskalyk served as a doctor in a town called Abyei, trapped—one might say—at the crossroads of the warring factions within the country. His account of his duties is often disturbing, particularly in the details of the horrors he encountered virtually every day. But the real story is the transformative nature of the experience itself, which exposed him to the depths of his self, and packed such an emotional wallop that he will probably never be the same. MORE HERE