Famine and Foreigners - 9780199569847

`Thank God for great journalism. This book is a much needed, exhaustively researched and effortlessly well written recent history of Ethiopia. A book that strips away the cant and rumour, the pros and antis and thoroughly explains the people, politics and economics of that most beautiful nation. A superb and vital piece of work by someone who clearly loves the country of which he writes.'---Bob Geldof

`Peter Gill was one of the most thorough and effective television journalists of his generation. He was there in 1984 and his work at the time added up to the most sensible, balanced and comprehensive explanation of what had happened. Twenty-five years later, he's gone back to test decades of aspiration against the realities on the ground. It's a book that bridges journalism and history, judicious analysis with a strong, and often gripping, narrative. Always readable, but never glib, this is a must for all those who think there is a simple answer to the famine, still waiting in the wings.'---Michael Buerk

`No outsider understands Ethiopia better than Peter Gill. He combines compassion with a clinical commitment to the truth. He writes with verve and an eye for telling detail. The result is a major contribution to the compelling story of this remarkable nation.'---Jonathan Dimbleby

`Famine and Foreigners is the essential book on Ethiopia, the world's crucible for hunger and poverty-and development theory and practice. Moving between the lives of ordinary Ethiopians and the controversies among their leaders and the theoreticians of international development, Peter Gill guides the reader through a fascinating story of suffering, resilience and enthusiasm-often misguided-for formulae for development'.---Alex de Waal

The terrible famine of 1984 focused the world's attention on Ethiopia and the aid issue as never before. Anyone over the age of 30 remembers something of those events-if not the original TV pictures, then Band Aid and Live Aid, Bob Geldof and Bono. Peter Gill was the first journalist to reach the epicentre of the world's worst famine and one of the TV reporters who brought the tragedy to light. This book is the story of what happened next in Ethiopia: the place, the people, the booming aid business, and the tensions that arose between aid-givers and aid-recipients. It discovers whether aid has worked, whether the rich world has been right in its prescriptions for the poor, and whether hunger is at last becoming history. The West saved lives 25 years ago and continues to save them now, but have we done much else to make sure Ethiopia will be able to do without aid?