Saturday, August 02, 2014

Bringing Down Gaddafi


Here's my review of Andrei Netto's book from Librarything. I got the book as part of their early reader program and it was really worth it.

This book reads like a spy thriller, but it is amazingly real. A Brazilian journalist, the author, Andrei Netto, tells the story of his attempt to enter Libya to report on the Revolution and go to Tripoli with the help of revolutionaries he meets along the way. Eventually, he is captured with his companion, an Iraqi journalist. In time he is freed and continues to tell the story of the Revolution. 

Often during the book, I was silently urging Netto to turn back, but like all good journalists he persisted to the end. 

The book drew me in to the action, while at the same time giving a good overview of the overall situation. It would have been helpful to have a map of Libya to follow through the towns he visited. I found myself frequently going to Google Maps.

Given how Libya has become a matter of partisan politics in the USA, it was refreshing to see a different perspective. The book was originally written in Portuguese. The English translation is excellent and highly readable.