“…carefully crafted, often poetic…a moving reflection..” – The Scotsman

So this book started out as a blog; although not a blog as you might expect it. Maskalyk says, a little disingenuously perhaps, that it was a way of bringing his family and friends closer to his hot, hot days; but it’s much more than that. The prose in his messages is carefully crafted, often poetic, always deliberate – self-conscious, sometimes. It gained a following far beyond his inner circle. What matters here is what he does with it – making it the core of a bigger story, a moving reflection written back home after an experience he always knew would be life-changing.

From the moment he disembarks from a World Food Programme plane at the airstrip in Abyei, in southern Kordofan, you’re there, in the dust with him – and, when the rains come, in the sea of mud.

You’re there in the makeshift shelters that act as operating theatre, consulting rooms and isolation unit; you spy on him snacking on emergency high energy bars in the storeroom; you’re with him at staff briefing meetings; and you’re there as he sleeps under the stars to escape the stifling heat, or wakes to the beauty of an African dawn.

Most stirringly, you’re with him as he watches the first of many babies die of malnutrition; as he and the small field team fight to stem a measles epidemic; as he treats a soldier shot in an exchange between rival militias; as a man with septicemia gives up his fight for life; as a woman dies after a traditional abortion; as he tells grieving relatives that it is not MSF’s job to help them with funeral arrangements.

Read the full review by MARY CROCKETT here.