“…a moving account, honest and fluently written…” – The Financial Times

Six Months in Sudan
By James Maskalyk
Canongate £14.99, 340 pages

Posted to Sudan to work as a doctor for aid organisation Médecins Sans Frontières, James Maskalyk decides to keep a blog. The result is Six Months in Sudan, a moving account of life at a hospital where malnutrition and measles are rife and the hours never-ending.

Maskalyk’s hopes that the situation will improve are dashed daily with the threat of war and a steady stream of patients. His own struggles – with the heat and isolation as well as in the nerve-wracking emergency room – are made real by vivid description: “So now I am blowing in tiny, tiny breaths through a tiny, tiny mask. I barely have to squeeze the bag, her lungs are so small … I look down, and her arm hangs loosely by her side.”

Honest and fluently written, Maskalyk’s book traces his rapport with his colleagues, his growing affection for his adopted town of Abyei and the readjustment he faces on returning home to Canada. It is an absorbing insight into international medicine.