Horn of Africa

"He’s involved in an intelligence operation going wrong in the Horn of Africa. It’s based on a trip the author made to Eritrea in 1975, but this time the characters are journalists who become mercenaries. The hero, or anti-hero, is a character called Nordstrand who is a descendant of pioneers who committed a massacre of Indians in America. He embodies this American pioneer spirit and takes it out to the current frontier, a frontier that could have equally been Vietnam, where the author himself fought and was court-martialed. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . When Nordstrand arrives he is carrying violence within him and his way of engaging with the native population, just as his ancestors engaged with the native population of America, is to kill them. It’s the heart of darkness, it’s the evil of going to another place when you’re 1,000 times more powerful, where you can do harm and you do do harm. Well, Phil used the name Charlie Gage because it’s meant to be my name, Charlie Glass. On that trip in 1975 there were five journalists: Myself, Philip Caputo for the Herald Tribune , Carl Smith of the Observer , Don McCullin who was taking pictures for the Sunday Times, and a Swedish journalist called Stefan Heimerson for Aftonbladet , a Stockholm-based paper. Apart from the name, there really isn’t that much similarity between Charlie Gage and me. My secretary wasn’t killed in Beirut, for example. It’s really about Phil. Phil was very badly shot at in Beirut, his office was trashed, he had a really horrible time during the civil war in Lebanon, so it’s much more him. There is this difficulty that men — soldiers and some journalists — have in adjusting to what is called ‘normal life’, a mortgage and a normal house, after the excitement and the exhilaration and the fear, even if it’s from a life that they didn’t like. But it’s a life of such extremes that feeling outside those extremes is very very difficult. If you’re used to be being burnt at 120 degrees, at 70 degrees you don’t feel anything. This character has that problem. Nordstrand didn’t have that problem. He was pure violence. Then there is a third character, Colefax the CIA character. He is the guiding hand who knows more than they do about what they’re doing. He is willing to use and destroy them. Well, I think they’re all psychopaths, including the ones in the background. You know you’re still killing, even if you’re doing it by remote control. Yes. You could obey the UN charter and not invade other countries. It’s international law. Unless you’re attacked, you’re not allowed to go and invade other countries with aggression. But no one seems able to enforce the UN charter."