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Don't Shoot the Clowns: Taking a Circus to the Children of Iraq
Don’t Shoot the Clowns is the account of one woman’s experience of living with Iraqi -people during the war and its aftermath. An intense and engaging story, it combines the reality of a country coping with invasion and occupation with the extraordinary story of the traveling circus set up to bring clowning and laughter to the children.
As a human rights observer, Jo Wilding, a young British trainee lawyer and solidarity activist, witnessed and recorded some of the worst atrocities committed against ordinary civilians. And as the occupation started, she joined a group of performers to put on circus shows in squatter camps, hospitals, schools, and orphanages.
Jo Wilding isn’t a journalist but a new kind of “citizen reporter,” instinctively recording events and publishing directly online. Her daily accounts have an immediacy and accuracy that bring the scenes sharply into focus. From the shocking and painful stories of the siege of Fallujah to the crowds of mesmerized children given some respite from horror and uncertainty by the clowns, every episode vividly evokes what day-to-day life in Iraq has been like.
As a human rights observer, Jo Wilding, a young British trainee lawyer and solidarity activist, witnessed and recorded some of the worst atrocities committed against ordinary civilians. And as the occupation started, she joined a group of performers to put on circus shows in squatter camps, hospitals, schools, and orphanages.
Jo Wilding isn’t a journalist but a new kind of “citizen reporter,” instinctively recording events and publishing directly online. Her daily accounts have an immediacy and accuracy that bring the scenes sharply into focus. From the shocking and painful stories of the siege of Fallujah to the crowds of mesmerized children given some respite from horror and uncertainty by the clowns, every episode vividly evokes what day-to-day life in Iraq has been like.
- GenresNonfictionPolitics
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 8, 2017
Jo Wilding gets a circus together in Iraq to bring laughter and respite to children caught in a war. And she talks to all manner of people and tries to get people out of Falluja in one piece. Unlike most reporters she wasn't embedded in any of the armies. War is stupid. And so wrong.
January 18, 2026
Horrific, but also uplifting. Very informative in parts, but some parts a bit unessesarily drawn out ( that is what list the star). However a book everyone should read if just to be better informed about exactly what goes on underreported during times of war, and what can go on afterwards.
November 25, 2020
An incredible piece of 'citizen journalism' with people stories on every page as well as a passionate testimony of the absolute wrongness of war.
April 13, 2014
A very interesting, eye-opening first-hand account of life in Iraq both shortly before, during and in the aftermath of the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the truly horrifying human cost 'on the ground'.
The title is rather misleading as, while it does involve the author's heartwarming recollections of her travels through the country entertaining children, it doesn't form the principle part of the book.
The book is far more of a travelogue, though one which hammers home the fact that what America and it's allies have done in Iraq is little short of truly horrific, bordering even on barbaric.
Although it is a travelogue-come-memoir, it does feel a little like it's dragging by the time you reach the last quarter as, without wanting to sound inhuman, there is so many tales of sadness, despair, death & destruction, that you get remarkably desensitised to it and wish it would go the extra step of say offering a solution or calling out those responsible for doing it etc.
Overall definitely an interesting book, if for nothing more than the truly eye-opening firsthand & eye-witness accounts of the kind of horrors inflicted on civilians in Iraq by both the defending Iraqi forces, the invading "defenders of freedom", and those paramilitaries that rushed into the power vacuum caused by the West's toppling of Saddam.
Not the most riveting account of the (second) Iraq war, but certainly the most deeply personal, human one I have read.
The title is rather misleading as, while it does involve the author's heartwarming recollections of her travels through the country entertaining children, it doesn't form the principle part of the book.
The book is far more of a travelogue, though one which hammers home the fact that what America and it's allies have done in Iraq is little short of truly horrific, bordering even on barbaric.
Although it is a travelogue-come-memoir, it does feel a little like it's dragging by the time you reach the last quarter as, without wanting to sound inhuman, there is so many tales of sadness, despair, death & destruction, that you get remarkably desensitised to it and wish it would go the extra step of say offering a solution or calling out those responsible for doing it etc.
Overall definitely an interesting book, if for nothing more than the truly eye-opening firsthand & eye-witness accounts of the kind of horrors inflicted on civilians in Iraq by both the defending Iraqi forces, the invading "defenders of freedom", and those paramilitaries that rushed into the power vacuum caused by the West's toppling of Saddam.
Not the most riveting account of the (second) Iraq war, but certainly the most deeply personal, human one I have read.
August 21, 2008
An independent insight into the real lives of innocent people caught up in the war in Iraq.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews