Echoes of Violence: Letters from a War Reporter (Human Rights and Crimes Against Humanity)
Through her personal letters to friends,Der Spiegelwar correspondent Emcke offers a perspective on war beyond journalistic dispatches. Emcke draws on letters she started writing to friends in 1999 while covering the aftermath of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. The letters were meant to provide a catharsis for Emcke, a way of coping with the horror she witnessed that could not be expressed in standard journalism. Trying to sort out for herself the level of violence and barbarity she was witnessing, Emcke detailed Serbian troops confiscating from Albanians every document evidencing citizenship and identification; the sight of a decaying corpse left sitting in a bombed-out house; a girl so traumatized by death that she spouts endless nonsense words; and a displaced attorney helping rape victims, who speaks of the simple victory of survival when you are the object of genocide. Emcke describes the moral and political delicacy of reporting on a war from one side or the other and the overwhelming questions of humanity and inhumanity found in the midst of war.Vanessa BushCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved