Place at the End of the World

by Janine Di Giovanni

At the start of her career Janine di Giovanni was advised, 'Write about the small voices, the people who can't write about themselves.'

For over fifteen years, she has been doing exactly that. From a near-abandoned hospital in Chechnya to bombed-out Tora Bora in Afghanistan, from Saddam Hussein's derelict palace in Baghdad to the inner-city barrios of Kingston, Jamaica, di Giovanni has covered almost every embattled place in the world and the people caught in its midst. Like Myriem, who lives on the West Bank, but can no longer use her farm because it falls on the Israeli side of the security fence; and Sia, one of the child soldiers of Sierra Leone, who talks blithely of shedding her violent past; and Abdul, who was imprisoned by the Taliban at seventeen for not wearing a beard.

The pieces collected here begin with Algeria in 1998 and end with Iraq in 2005. They are vivid, raw and impassioned - and they make war terrifyingly real.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, War, History, Journalism

432 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Janine di Giovanni is one of Europe's most respected and experienced reporters, with vast experience covering war and conflict. Her reporting has been called "established, accomplished brilliance" and she has been cited as "the finest foreign correspondent of our generation".

Born in the US, she began reporting by covering the first Palestinian intifada in the late 1980s and went on to report nearly every violent conflict since then. Her trademark has always been to write about the human cost of war, to attempt to give war a human face, and to work in conflict zones that the world's press has forgotten.

She continued writing about Bosnia long after most people forgot it. In 2000, she was one of the few foreign reporters to witness the fall of Grozny, Chechnya, and her depictions of the terror after the fall of city won her several major awards. She has campaigned for stories from Africa to be given better coverage, and she has worked in Somalia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, Benin, Burkino Faso, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe, Liberia, as well as Israel, Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans, East Timor and Chechnya.

During the war in Kosovo, di Giovanni travelled with the Kosovo Liberation Army into occupied Kosovo and sustained a bombing raid on her unit which left many soldiers dead. Her article on that incident, and many of her other experiences during the Balkan Wars, "Madness Visible" for Vanity Fair (June 1999), won the National Magazine Award. It was later expanded into a book for Knopf/Bloomsbury, and has been called one of the best books ever written about war. Madness Visible has been optioned as a feature film by actress Julia Roberts production company, Revolution Films.

Di Giovanni has written several books: Ghosts by Daylight: A Memoir of War and Love (Bloomsbury/Knopf 2011); The Place at the End of the World: Essays from the Edge (Bloomsbury 2006); Against the Stranger (Viking/Penguin 1993) about the effect of occupations during the first intifada on both Palestinians and Israelis; The Quick and The Dead about the siege of Sarajevo, and the introduction to the best-selling Zlata's Diary about a child growing up in Sarajevo. Her work have been anthologized widely, including in The Best American Magazine Writing, 2000.

She has won four major awards, including the National Magazine Award, one of America's most prestigious prizes in journalism. She has won two Amnesty International Awards for Sierra Leone and Bosnia. And she has won Britain's Grenada Television's Foreign Correspondent of the Year for Chechnya.

She is one of the journalists featured in a documentary about women war reporters, Bearing Witness, a film by three-time Academy Award winning director Barbara Kopple, which was shown at the Tribeca film festival and on the A&E network in May, 2005.

In 1993, she was the subject of another documentary about women war reporters, "No Man's Land" which followed her working in Sarajevo. She has also made two long format documentaries for the BBC. In 2000, she returned to Bosnia to make "Lessons from History," a report on five years of peace after the Dayton Accords. The following year she went to Jamaica to report on a little-known but tragic story of police assassinations of civilians, "Dead Men Tell No Tales." Both films were critically acclaimed.


With Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega, Managua, Nicaragua, January, 1990. Photo by Marc Schlossman
Di Giovanni's book, The Place at the End of the World, a collection of her essays, was published by Bloomsbury in January, 2006. 2006 has also brought projects on Muslims in Europe, the French riots, AIDS in South Africa, September 11 anniversary features, and the current political situation in Israel among others. She is at work on another book for Knopf/Bloomsbury, Up at Tito's Villa, set in Montenegro.

Janine di Giovanni is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, a contributing writer to the New York Times, Granta, Newsweek and many

Reviews

[Mark Farley]

Quite like the author's previous work, Madness Visible, this book invokes the subtle truth and tragedy behind many of the different conflicts our leaders insist on taking us into (often under protest). Unlike her last book, this collection of tender and frank articles gives us a wide and saddening overview of war. The last chapter (an intensely personal and brilliant account of the author's own personal fight) is just so moving and captures the essence of life and the tribulations that we go through.

[Nadia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've never been to a war place, a wreckage of it.
But I've always wanted to go to one. To see one, really.
Because, it's pitiful and heart-wrenching, how civilians become so devastated and helpless, victimized, to say the least.

And in this book, it described the lives of war. The people, the family, society, country. And in people, there are emotions. If human emotions are easy to read, easy to handle-with-care, conveniently discussed, wars are not so much of an issue, aren't they?

[Shanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Janine diGiovanni lived the life I dreamed of when I was in college. She has reported from war zones both known and unknown in the global headlines for the past 25 years. This book is a great cross-section of the human lives behind the wars in Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia. She also delivers a poignant essay on the aftermath of 9/11 in a small New Jersey town.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The third book of Janine’s I’ve read and once again didn’t disappoint. Just love her writing style so much. It’s a collection of tender and horrifying essays, giving us a wide and saddening overview of war. Pretty depressing to read it and realise many of the countries are in the same or worse places than they were over a decade after it was written.

[Cherie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A- Really compelling essays - about the mines the destroy people after war, about how neighbors turn on each other, about the hate that destroys people and communities. Really powerful, and sad. Di Giovanni is an amazing journalist who captures the atrocities and horrors most don't see of war.