Book review: The Night Wanderers

THERE have been plenty of books on Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army in northern Uganda but I very much doubt if there will be a better one than this.

Jagielski, a veteran Polish foreign correspondent, carefully sets the LRA rebellion in context, showing how tribal divisions, political chaos and the growth of a particularly apocalyptic brand of fundamentalism provided conditions in which Kony was able to thrive, forcing his child soldiers to perform horrendous atrocities such as making their victims eat human flesh or burning them alive.

However, the book is far more than just a history: it’s a journey into human baseness, a journey from which no one – including Jagielski himself – emerges unscarred, or entirely rational. It’s a journey too into a place where the normal hierachy of life – old at the top, young at the bottom – has been turned on its head.

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“Children are different here,” someone tells him at the start. An army colonel warns Jagielski that if he’s driving along and sees a group of children up ahead, he must turn back immediately. “And if they show up close to you and it’s too late to turn around, keep going at full speed.”

Jagielski is a rich, dark stylist who occasionally topples into over-writing – although this might be the fault of the translation. By the end of this remarkable book, there’s a sense he has lost almost all the convictions that underpinned his life and is having to build himself up again from scratch.

The Night Wanderers

By Wojciech Jagielski, trans. by Antonia Lloyd Jones

Old Street Publishing, 320pp, £9.99

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