Charlie Johnson in the Flames

The author, a human rights activist, has written this thrilling short novel (179 pages) about Charlie Johnson, a middle-aged American journalist who has worked all the horrific war torn areas of the globe for many years along with his Polish partner-photographer Jacek. We enter the story as the two men are escaping from a house they were hiding in after it is discovered by the opposition, a Serbian commander. A civilian from the house is set on fire, manages to make her way to Charlie and Jacek, and the three are being helicoptered to the military hospital. Her subsequent death changes Charlie profoundly, and his sole mission becomes finding the Serbian commander responsible for her cruel torture and death. A beautifully written, page turning, fascinating look at the inside life of one scarred, battle weary, foreign correspondent and how dealing with brutality and indifference, and the burning of the woman in Serbia in particular, led him to the climax of this story.

The author is a war correspondent who has seen it all, especially in the Balkans. And this novel gives him a chance to put some of his experiences into fictional form. The result is a 179-page book that tells a grim and yet realistic story and put me right into the shoes of his main character. The book centers on one horrible act of violence. Charlie Johnson, a war correspondent not unlike the author, is trying to get a story. He's made a bad judgment though, and a woman who has sheltered him and his crew is put in danger. She's set afire by a cruel officer and Charlie attempts to save her, burning his hands in the process. Charlie's hands heal but he is tortured by visions of the crime and he vows to find the man who committed the heartless act and kill him.. The rest of the book follows him in this quest and, along the way we get to meet the people in his life. Etta, a woman from his office in England, makes a special trip to help him get through the first bad days. Then his friend Jacek, a Polish cameraman, invites him to his own home for several weeks while he is healing and Charlie gets to experience the domestic bliss of Jacek and his wife, Magda, so different from his own wife Elizabeth. Eventually, he goes home to England, only to realize that he doesn't belong there. Soon, he is on a plane back to the Balkans, this time at his own expense. Now, he's on a manhunt for the killer. This is quite a story and the writing kept me intrigued. I learned about the way the war affected the journalist and I also got a sense of the Balkans and the difficult lives that the people lead. As the book hurtled to its inevitable conclusion, I was left with a satisfactory story. But I was also saddened by the sorrowful truths that exist in that part of the world. The author is a good writer and, a student of human nature, which he brought into focus against the background of the reality of war in a distant land. Recommended.

In the collective imagination, the name Kosovo conjures up hellish images of violence, terror, brutality and death. Drawing on his expert knowledge and first-hand experience of war zones, Michael Ignatieff's short novel "Charlie Johnston In The Flames", set during the war in Kosovo, is a moving, disturbing account of one man's agonising experience of the evils of war. Veteran TV war correspondent, Charlie Johnston, has decades of "holiday from hell" assignments behind him, covering harrowing events in the trouble-spots of the world. Jaded by the carnage he is professionally paid to witness and exposure to all forms of appalling brutality and futile, violent death, Charlie thought he had seen it all: mutilated bodies, burnt-out buildings, fire-gutted villages, sobbing women, wretched orphans - until he sees a vision from hell! Returning from a risky cross-border trip into war-torn Kosovo, he and his cameraman sidekick, Jacek, eyewitness a horrifying atrocity of the kind that marks the moral malaise of our age: a young Kosovar village woman who sheltered them is doused with a jerry-can of gasoline and touched to flame with the flick of the lighter of a militia patrol commander - the commander caught on film by Jacek and later identified as a Serbian army colonel. Ignatieff shows how the effects of this shock-horror experience can blight the life of even such a battle-hardened war reporter as Charlie. The horror of seeing the young woman burned alive before his eyes - one senseless killing too many - gets to Charlie, penetrates his protective shell of detachment, his gut-reaction being to track down and wreak vengeance on the colonel ... or at least confront him in person about his motivation for the killing. The theme of revenge resonates through this novel. Charlie himself appears to have ambivalent feelings about the subject: he is painfully aware that the burning compulsion he feels for retribution and revenge - and is powerless to check - is anachronistic and contradictory to his respect for human rights. Yet such is his sense of outrage at the colonel's casual, diabolical act of violence that he feels "an instinct for vengeance can burn through an educated respect for human rights". Like a thriller, the plot creates expectation that there will be a day of reckoning for the colonel in a showdown with the avenging Charlie. The inspired title, "Charlie Johnston In The Flames", encapsulates all the troubles that afflict Charlie. For Charlie, being "in the flames" takes many shapes and forms: his bandaged hands have been literally engulfed in flames; metaphorically, flames of anger and revenge burn deeply within him; his dreams are haunted by images of the torched village woman; mentally, he is strung up by the weight of the incident pressing on his mind, and from the emotional fall-out of a marriage under pressure. For Charlie Johnston, being "in the flames" can mean many different things - as the dramatic, unexpected denouement of this novel