There’s nothing like getting your boots on the ground. If you’re a writer or journalist chasing a difficult story, there’s no substitute for dropping what you’re doing, telling your wife or husband that you love her or him and will return with all sorts of exotic, possibly sparkling, presents, flying out there and getting on with it.

Hats off, then, to the 27-year-old Jay Bahadur, who quit his job in market research in 2008, just as the Somali pirates story was commanding the world’s attention, and made his slightly tortuous way into Somalia to research the story for himself. Although six weeks in Garowe, the

Literary Review

Jun 2011

Categories

Justin Marozzi

Desert Cockerels

Angels in Disguise

Lines In The Sand

The Great Dictator

Perishing Pioneers

Sheer Khan

Title Chasing

Land of Unreason

From Mogadishu to Missouri

Eastern Promise

Tyranny of Trifles

See No Evil

Tewodros the Tragic

A World of Wanderers

Eastern Enlightenment

Precious Compost

Angry Young Seyyed

He on Honey-Dew Hath Fed

One Sauce to Fit All

Murdered By The Mahdi

The Heinrich Manoeuvres