Book Launch – Breakup: A Reporter’s Marriage Amid a Central African War w/ Anjan Sundaram

Join us for the launch of Anjan Sundaram’s Breakup: A Reporter’s Marriage amid a Central African War, a courageous memoir about the personal cost of war reporting, vividly recalling his dangerous assignment in CAR and confronting its devastating impact on his family. Anjan will be in conversation with Dr Lea Hellmueller, Director of Research and Lecturer/Assistant Professor at the Journalism Department at City, University of London.

About the book

‘A riveting account of a country and a marriage falling apart.’ — The Telegraph

‘Anjan Sundaram is one of the great reporters of our age.’ — Fergal Keane, BBC foreign correspondent

‘An immensely powerful work.’ — Philippe Sands, author of East West Street and The Ratline

‘To shatter one of the gravest geopolitical silences: open this book. Your world will never be the same.’ — Junot Diaz

After ten years reporting from central Africa, Anjan Sundaram is living a quiet life in Canada with his wife and new-born. But when preparations for genocide emerge in the Central African Republic, he is suddenly torn between his duty to his family, and his moral responsibility to expose the conflict.

Soon he is travelling through the CAR, driven by a possible spy—discovering ransacked villages and locals fleeing imminent massacre, fielding offers of mined gold, and hearing of soldiers who steal schoolbooks for cigarette paper. When he refuses to return home, journeying instead into a rebel stronghold, he learns that there is no going back to the life he has left behind.

Breakup illuminates the personal price paid by those bearing witness on the frontlines of humanitarian crimes across the globe. This brilliantly introspective, strikingly grounded account of perilous warzones and inner turmoil is sure to become a modern classic.

About the author

Anjan Sundaram is an award-winning author, journalist and television presenter, whose war correspondence has won a Frontline Club Award and a Reuters prize. Hailed as a ‘successor to Kapuscinski’, his previous books are Bad News: Last Journalists in a Dictatorship (an Amazon Book of the Year) and Stringer: A Reporter’s Journey in the Congo (a Royal African Society Book of the Year). Sundaram has reported from Central Africa for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Observer, Granta, Foreign Policy, Politico and The Associated Press. His books have been featured by Christiane Amanpour and Fareed Zakaria on CNN; by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show; and on BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week and Start the Week. Sundaram graduated from Yale University and holds a PhD in Journalism and Literature from the University of East Anglia.

Organised in partnership with City, University of London and the Rory Peck Trust, an organisation dedicated to the support, safety and welfare of freelance journalists around the world.

The event will be live-streamed.

Live-streaming details:

Topic: Book launch: Anjan Sundaram
Time: Jun 20, 2023 06:30 PM London

Join Zoom Meeting
https://city-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/7629510875