Heart of Darfur
'Every chapter evokes sharp memories of the very brief time my son George and I spent in the region. The reader gets many revealing personal anecdotes, but also comes away with a sense of the complexities, frustrations and, ultimately, the unquenchable hopes of those struggling to end the ongoing genocide.'  -- Nick Clooney, Cincinnati Post   It takes a brave woman to leave her family and friends and travel to one of the poorest and most war-ravaged parts of the world to work as a nurse. It takes an even braver one to rty and write a compassionate book about waht she saw... by the end you have nothing but respect fro teh nurse who saved so many people and made so many lives that little bit better. "It is easy to save a life in Darfur." says French Blaker. You just need to pluck up courage to go up there."    -- London Lite 20080226   "Intensely moving and heart-breakingly honest... she describes her experiences in simple, heart-breaking prose. Inspring, essential reading."  -- Sainsburys Magazine 20080201   "It's harrowing stuff, but a tribute to the inextinguishable spirit of the suffering people of Darfur." ****  -- Daily Mail - Weekend 20080207   "Her account of her time in Darfur is honest, and that means that it is brutal, painful and shocking. She did not shy away from her patients - and we should not shy away from this heart-breaking broadcast."  -- Radio Times - on Radio 4 Book of the Week broadcast 20080204   "Darfur flutters on the edge of the west's conscience - hopelessly complex, and comfortably distant. Indifference has somehow become a default reaction for so many of us. But not New Zealand nurse, Lisa French Blaker, who journeyed into the darkest, most desperate reaches of human life when she spent nine months working for Medecins San Frontieres in Darfur. Heart of Darfur, her memoir of the period, humanises the conflict, translating the region's morass of problems into an emotionally charged and fulfilling story. The predicament of the MSF workers is engrossing. There's a minute-by-minute political tightrope to tread; and with pitifully few resources, the achievement of saving one human life is often eclipsed by the inability to save others."  -- Financial Times 20080308