Carsten Stormer To the Front and Back, Please

"I had just completed my journalism course and was firmly convinced that the media were waiting for me with bated breath. I am ready, I thought. I was fairly sure I would win the Pulitzer prize that same year; I was brimming with self confidence and eagerness. At last I could swap book-learning for reality and actually feel the pulse of life. A war was going on in Afghanistan; what then could be better than to start my career as a journalist there? At long last I could sally forth and do what countless men had done before me: I would go to war." 'To the Front and Back' are tales from ten years on world's frontlines. From Afghanistan to Darfur, from Somalia to Iraq, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burma and the Philippines. This is a personal journey of a young, na ve, adventure seeking man desperately trying to fill his life with a purpose. And to finally find it in journalism: To tell stories and be the voice for those who have no one to speak for them. Carsten Stormer's story is one of passion, pain and truth. This is a testament to those who risk their lives everyday. For those who make it out, and for those whose memory will live on through this remarkable memoir. In these notes from the early years of his career, German journalist Carsten Stormer offers an amusing and often deeply moving account of the thrills, anguish and self-torment which fill the life of a tyro reporter let loose in the chaotic backyard of the unreported world. A young man's introduction to the stark realities of the human condition.