War Junkie

Published by Corgi on 2nd June 2003

Jon Steele is a war junkie. Soon after starting work as an ITN cameraman, he began to feel at home in the kind of places ordinary people get evacuated from. Before long he was living for the rush which comes as bullets fly around your head and bombs explode at your feet. Normal life just couldn’t compete – bad news was big fun.

Georgia – the last flight out of Sokhumi airport. Taking off at night the wrong way down the runway. Total darkness, random anti-aircraft fire and a bloody great mountain somewhere out there. Abkhazia – cruising the roads with an army of drunken road warriors, looking for something to kill. Moscow – tooled-up rebels and the Red Army fight bloody hand-to-hand battles in the streets and tanks storm the White House. Utter chaos. Rwanda – the aftermath of a massacre. Hundreds of thousands butchered, rivers of blood and the UN struggle to maintain a semblance of control. Zaire – endless fields of starving children, displaced by war and ravaged by cholera. Dying in droves. Sarajevo – a small girl gunned down by a sniper’s bullet and the balance finally tips. Emotional meltdown …

Jon Steele takes you on a gut-wrenching ride to hell and back. A ride you share with unforgettable characters – from the headlines, from television, and haunting characters without names. The good, the bad and the just plain dead. As funny as it is terrifying, as sharp as broken glass, War Junkie takes you to places you will never forget as it shines an unforgiving light into some of the darkest recesses of modern history.