A review by sam8834
Stringer: A Reporter's Journey in the Congo by Anjan Sundaram

3.0

Sundaram's account of his recent time spent in the Congo is more travel memoir than anything else, kept interesting by his independent, low-budget reporting. One gets the impression he's really living as part of the community, instead of observing from afar as most outsiders working for larger news organizations would do. His writing is also mature and expressive enough to bring to life the setting and people. However, I was expecting more of a journalistic take on the conflicts in the region and was therefore a bit thrown by the more personal nature of this book. Maybe that was an incorrect assumption on my part, but I thought the whole basis of Sundaram's journey was to leave his current career track behind, in favor of a legitimate, on-the-ground mission to inform the public about dark corners of the world. Nothing wrong with travel writing as a genre, and those looking for that will likely enjoy this. It just didn't fulfill my expectation of a more investigative, informative work. Oddly enough, I would have far preferred to read any of the handful of articles Sundaram wrote during his time there, of which merely the writing process was discussed.