Johnny Mad Dog [Hardcover]

This book graphically portrays the horrific ordeal of innocents caught in the crossfire of rebel factions in civil war-torn West Africa. Hordes of people leave their homes and are relentlessly pursued by the rebels, in this case a group called Mata Mata, the cause narrated by 16-year old Johnny Mad Dog. While marching his "men" from place to place and killing so-called traitors indiscriminately, the young men loot and rape with impunity, proud of their manly prowess and totally oblivious to those they destroy.

With youthful hubris, Johnny Mad Dog considers himself an intellectual, but his arrogance far exceeds his native intelligence, as brutal a character as any seasoned veteran. He rationalizes his actions, spouting policy in rejecting "the previous government and its leader, enemies of the people and democracy, a genocidal regime... I think that's what we'd been told to say."

In sharp contrast, the 16-year old Laokole leaves her shabby hut with her brother and legless mother in a wheelbarrow, the children taking turns pushing. Along the way, the brother, Fofo is separated from his sister and mother. The mother's legs are a casualty of the last rebel rampage, when her husband was shot. Laokole thinks about the futility of their plight, danger at every turn, even "why a woman should limit the number of her own children: because the fewer children you had, the more easily you could flee in times of war and looting." Nowhere is safe in this chaotic world, turned upside-down by the rebels, soldiers, bandits, all interchangeable, young and old pursued, "for no one is too old to flee death". Everyone carries their most prized possessions, for Laokole and Fofo it is their mother.

By contrasting the lives of the two teenagers, Johnny Mad Dog and Laokole, the author paints a stunning picture of depravity vs. courage. Laokole is the voice of humanity, while Johnny Mad Dog is corrupted by power, depraved by senseless murders, excusing his own brutality: "I know, I know, my kind heart is going to get me in serious trouble." In alternating chapters, the girl and the young man maneuver through the unremitting violence that is total chaos. The carnage is everywhere, death stalking the streets with each fetish-wearing youth with a rifle in his hands.

The refugees look for their story to be told on the television, but nothing is mentioned on American TV. The European stations have some coverage, "images I've seen a thousand times on programs about Rwanda, Angola, Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Central African Republic and eastern Zaire". Africa is seen on the screen as a vast refugee camp, "the ragged, wandering hordes." This painful, but important novel gives voice to the massacre of innocents, over 10, 000 deaths, half a million displaced persons and refugees, a humanitarian catastrophe. "How can you have hope in a country when the road to power is littered with corpses?" The haunting voice of this young woman tells the story of millions, abandoned to their fate. When will the world respond to this genocidal nightmare? Luan Gaines/2005.

This book really brought home some of what it must feel like to live unprotected in a war ravaged country, a country where citzens are just meat. I felt completely compelled and scared for our heroine, a family strong child trapped within her own country. I was repelled by the brilliantly written villian - a boy who is the worst kind of stupid, a boy who thinks he is a smart man.

Be warned - it is brutal.

The book was neither "We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families" nor was it "Mortals" but it did manage to capture the ease with which people drift into mindless violence. The author appeared to believe that lack of education is a pre-requisite for senseless mayhem, apparently distinguishing senseless mayhem from sensible mayhem. Being such, it trotted out the usual examples of severed limbs, murderous over-reactions and bodies set alight. As in most cases, and possibly actual reality, whites and Europeans were generally exempted from the worst, although they were no doubt frightened out of their wits. For the reader its a footrace between fear and disgust but undoutedly these things happed and needless to say they must be chronicled in some fashion.

Like CSI, there was so much blood and guts that one became innured to it early on. it became a little predicatble, Africans gone wild killing each other while whites helicopter in for a photo shoot. As such it lacked much of the simmering outrage against Western Aid of "Capetown to Cairo". Are we to belive that all Amero-Europeans are superficial gawkers in swell transport while all Africans are helpless victims of both their own violence and the West's desire for entertainment?

That being said, the book did keep one's attention is sort of a movie-like way and even though the various outcomes were predictable, one could not wait for his worst fears regarding the main charaters to be realizied, but in a palatable form. Maybe literature is generally devolving into a screenplay; this book seemed to be