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My Friend the Mercenary Hardcover – 3 Jun 2010

by
James Brabazon (Author)
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James Brabazon (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars 37 customer reviews
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd; First Edition edition (3 Jun. 2010)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1847674399
  • ISBN-13: 978-1847674395
  • Product Dimensions: 16 x 4 x 24 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 564,644 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Review

A classic story of intrigue, greed and violence. --Sebastian Junger

Outstanding . . . I couldn't put this book down.
--Andy McNab

Book Description

A first-hand account of the most infamous coup attempt in recent history - and of what it takes to be a friend and survivor

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Customer Reviews

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Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsA cracking good read; highly recommended
By isabel in the kitchen on 3 Jun. 2010
Format: Hardcover
This is not usually the sort of book I would go for but having read the extracts in The Times I thought I would give it a whirl and I am glad I did. Once I had picked it up I couldn't put it down.

Th first part of the book covers in gory detail the author's experiences in Liberia as a journalist with the mercenary Nick du Toit who he hired to protect him and the growing friendship between the two men. Not for the squeamish or faint-of- heart.

In the second part of the book the action moves to Simon Mann and the infamous Wonga coup - which luckily for his health and sanity James Brabazon missed out on experiencing personally. If life imitates art, then this is Frederick Forsyth's The Dogs of War writ large and terrible; it is almost as if Simon Mann and his merry band had set out to recreate the novel's plotline except that real-life is not quite so tidy nor good and evil so clearly demarcated. And the emotions and motivatitions it portrays run the full gamut from courage and endurance in great adversity to greed and utter stupidity.

The narrative is gripping and fast-paced and Nick du Toit emerges as the anti-hero who engages our sympathy, if only for his survival against all the odds from the torture and hell of Black Beach prison in Equatorial Guinea.

And having read this, I have just crossed regime-change off my list of 101 Things To Do Before I Die.
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5.0 out of 5 starsHighly Recommended - Action, Adventure and Insight
By E. Watts on 17 Jun. 2010
Format: Hardcover
This book packs a mighty punch. A nerve-wrecking story told in sharp, spare and precise prose, it reads more like a thriller than a memoir.

The first section of the book covers Brabazon's experiences in Liberia during that country's brutal civil war. It is an astonishing account, full of the worst horrors of modern conflict: marauding child soldiers, executions and cannibalism of prisoners. The tales of atrocities are striking for the author's use of detail ("the close-up, messy process of gutting a human being") and his honesty. He does not stint in describing the complex emotions he felt as a witness to such events - or in tracing how long weeks on the frontline messed with his moral compass.

Yet the story is far from unremittingly bleak. Brabazon captures the humour and spirit of the characters caught up in the war, from the spliff-smoking rebel commander Deku to the retinue of refugees, journalists and spies he meets along the way. It is also strangely redemptive to read how, amid the carnage, he forged a lasting friendship with his shady mercenary bodyguard, Nick du Toit.

Beyond the zipping bullets and booming rocket-propelled grenades, the book is also compelling when the author describes the difficult process of coming home: having flashbacks of rotting corpses while on a date with his girlfriend, for example. It is a powerful and, again, sharply honest insight into the trauma that his experiences inflicted.

The final third disentangles the story of the coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea, the `project' that Nick du Toit took on after Liberia. It offers a fascinating insider's view into the world of modern espionage and just how one sets about toppling a government in the twenty-first century.Read more ›
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4.0 out of 5 starsA book of two halves
By Stewart M TOP 1000 REVIEWER on 26 Aug. 2010
Format: Hardcover
My Friend the Mercenary is a strange and rather compelling book. The two main characters are a journalist with left wing leanings, James Brabazon and his South African body guard, Nick du Toit. The body guard is a mercenary, a white Special Forces soldier from the Apartheid era and in all probability the kind of person the journalist would have considered a killer before majority rule.

As a result this is a story that rises above the level of a "boys own adventure" in Liberia because of the, to say the least, conflicting moral positions Brabazon has to negotiate while reporting. The first part of the book, which is really the story of the growing friendship of these two men, is set during a Liberian civil war of 2003. Here all the carnage of a modern "tow tech" war is laid out before the reader, and some of the scenes are brutal. But interwoven through this horror is the growing friendship of the two central characters.

In many ways this friendship reaches some form of peak when du Toit invites Brabazon to film a coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea. What he is asked to do goes well beyond the bounds of normal journalistic methods. In the end, due to a chance event, he does not film the coup. However, du Toit and many of his "associates" are arrested and imprisoned.

At this point the book changes tone and becomes necessarily far more complex. In intricate web of who said what, to who, where the money is coming from, and how involved in the plots were a number of governments then ensues. The name of Mark Thatcher crops up - which was a surprise to me at least.

The fate of the mercenaries from the failed coup is an important part of the book, so I'm not going to mention it.

This really is a book of two half's.Read more ›
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3.0 out of 5 starsFriendship First...
By Airly_2904 on 28 July 2010
Format: Hardcover
I enjoyed this book very much and found it a gripping, informative and often saddening read. I read quickly through the last 100 pages because by that time I'd had enough of the plans of the plunderers and how they go awry. To me the book seemed to be summed up by its title: it was mostly about a friendship and how it endured in extraordinarily difficult circumstances. Alas the real victims (except for Rocket) of the mercenary parasites and their self-serving destruction didn't seem to get much attention at all... oh, sorry, there is a brief paragraph in the acknowledgements at the end of the book. The author is big on the issue of moral choices but I was left wondering what choices the innocent were given... The lack of that left me with a lack of sympathy for the suffering of Nick and his cohorts.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Amazing book quick delivery

Published 10 months ago by Amy washbrook
5.0 out of 5 starsFascinating, Gripping & Revealing

An intimate account of a harrowing and gruesome conflict, leading to a breathtaking expose of one of the most audacious coups in modern history. Read more

Published 10 months ago by Amazon Customer
4.0 out of 5 starsVery good indeed.

Very good indeed. And of course non fiction. A real insight into a rough war. I'd like to see the films referred to (some is on You Tube) and read up on the war and the... Read more

Published 11 months ago by brian ingram
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

An eye opening great read

Published 16 months ago by Jamie Bosomworth
3.0 out of 5 starsI got a bit bored

Perhaps I have read too much of this genre, but I found it a bit dull and have't finished it (got about half way through). Read more

Published 18 months ago by Sean Slippers
5.0 out of 5 starsBUY THIS BOOK BEFORE ANY OTHER, OUTSTANDING

One of the best books I have ever read

Published 19 months ago by Bristol Dan
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Great read. Will always recommend. The author is very like-able and tells a very interesting and unique real-life story.

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