After listening, half awake , to the interview by the ABC’s Kerry O’Brien of American journalist /author, Megan Stack, about her book Every Man in this Village Is a Liar ,and then reading Gecko Tails -A Journey Through Cambodia, by another American foreign correspondent , Carol Livingston, I was mightily impressed . The way Stack verbalised the grim situations she witnessed in Middle East wars and powerful passages read from her book by O’Brien presented a stark and grim picture : children being buried in hospital gardens while all about was convulsed in mad warfare; Palestine morgues overflowing with the remains of suicide bombers –usually just their heads and feet ; the plight of the old, infirm and others left or those who chose to stay behind in southern Lebanon which was pulverised by the Israelis , taking out Red Cross vehicles in the process. The obscenity and madness of war was presented with startling, new clarity .
Stack , whose book is published in Australia by Melbourne based Scribe, was the recipient of the 2006 Overseas Press Club of America’s Hal Boyle Award and a finalist in the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for her coverage of the Iraq War. Now she is the Moscow Bureau Chief for the Los Angeles Times.
In the case of Livingston’s book , Gecko Tails, Phoenix Books, 1996, it at first glance gives the wrong impression that it could be a travel guide to Cambodia ( Ankor Wat and all that ) , but turns out to be a less blood- drenched account than Stack’s searing work, despite some coverage of the appalling Pol Pot regime and the killing fields.
What it does present is an interesting picture of all the foreign correspondents and free lance journalists , including backpackers pretending to be reporters, running about in the troubled country . Journos no doubt will appreciate the author’s description of the official opening of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Phnom Penh where those in attendance were showered with bats chopped up by the overhead fans. One reporter mentioned is known as Murdoch’s Midget . Up near the border with Vietnam, Livingston is offered army rations in tins , called MREs (meals ready to eat), better known as MEALS REJECTED BY ETHIOPIANS .
Any Darwinite reading this recommended book will never again be able to listen to the sound of a gecko without suspecting the cute , pop-eyed creature might be saying something quite naughty. Aussies , as well as Skippy, rate a mention , as does a determined Kiwi girl . Even though there is much humour , the plight and desperate conditions of the masses in a country, now referred to internationally as SCAMBODIA , because of the corruption , comes through.
Any Darwinite reading this recommended book will never again be able to listen to the sound of a gecko without suspecting the cute , pop-eyed creature might be saying something quite naughty. Aussies , as well as Skippy, rate a mention , as does a determined Kiwi girl . Even though there is much humour , the plight and desperate conditions of the masses in a country, now referred to internationally as SCAMBODIA , because of the corruption , comes through.
