The Devil is a Black Dog: Stories from the Middle East and Beyond.

AuthorHoadley, Stephen
PositionBook review

THE DEVIL IS A BLACK DOG: Stories from the Middle East and Beyond

Author: Sandor Jaszberenyi

Published by: Scribe, Melbourne, 2014, 194pp, A$21.99.

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This collection blurs the distinction between reportage and fiction, but felicitously and informatively. Each of the stories emerges not only from Jaszberenyi's experiences as a senior war correspondent in the Middle East, Africa and the Ukraine but also from his humanity.

While each is unique, the stories are linked by a journalist's-eye-view of unfolding situations of distress, whether his or those for whom he has friendship or empathy. They are vignettes about victims of armed conflict, religious intolerance, illness, destitution or callousness whose verisimilitude touched this reviewer. But the author's stoicism, irony and perceptiveness, expressed in crisp economical phrases, prevent the narratives from descending into sentimentality, and engender admiration for the capacity of his subjects to carry on even as they suffer or perish.

The title story portrays the journalist staying with an imam in Yemen in a district recently torn by battles between the Houthis and the government forces. The black dog was leader of a pack that scavenged on the bodies of fallen fighters in the hills and acquired such a taste for human blood that they began...

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