Researching her second book, I Didn’t Do It for You, Michela Wrong says she learned something that shocked her. Very often, no one around her had even heard of Eritrea, the nation in question, let alone anything of its agonising 100-year history. This cannot be true. A shrewd Africa correpondent for the Financial Times and others, and author of a superb book about Mobutu Sese Seko’s Zaire, Miss Wrong must have known what little interest Eritrea held for the average European or American. This makes the book’s excellence, her fair and thorough rendering of such unknown characters and events, all the more admirable.

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