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From Jeffrey Gettleman, a Pulitzer Prize - winning New York Times journalist, comes a memoir about finding love and finding a calling in one of the most violent yet most beautiful places in the world.A seasoned war correspondent, Jeffrey Gettleman has covered every major conflict over the past twenty years, from Afghanistan to Iraq to the Congo. For the past decade, he has served as the East Africa bureau chief for the New York Times, fulfilling his teenage dream of living in Africa. Love, Africa is the story of how he got there - and of his difficult, winding path toward becoming a good reporter and a better man. At nineteen, Gettleman fell in love, twice. On a community service trip in college, he went to Africa - a terrifying, exciting, dreamlike continent in the throes of change that imprinted itself on his imagination and heart. One day, he vowed, he would return there to stay. But around the same time he also fell in love with Courtenay, a fellow Cornell student - the brightest, fiercest, kindest woman he'd ever met. Courtenay became a lawyer in America, and all Gettleman wanted was to be with her. But he also hungered to be in Africa. For the next decade he would waver between these two abiding passions. Finally, after a great deal of growing up, he learned to be honest with himself about what he wanted - a realization that ultimately fulfilled both of his deepest desires. A beautifully rendered coming-of-age story in the tradition of Barbarian Days, Love, Africa is a tale of passion, professional rivalries, tortuous long-distance relationships, marital strife, forgiveness, parenthood, and happiness that explores the power of finding yourself in the most unexpected of places.



About the Author

Jeffrey Gettleman

My interest in Africa was a bit of a fluke. I wasn't one of those precocious kids toying with atlases or globes at a tender age. When Joseph Conrad was a little boy, the story goes, he pointed to a map of Africa and declared: "When I grow up, I'm going there." When I was a little boy, I pointed my finger into my nose and declared I was going to be a fireman.

I grew up in a Chicago suburb, progressing at an average speed from Star Wars figures to Estes rockets to Roman candles to struggling with how to unclasp a bra in the dark. My mom was a social worker, my dad a lawyer, my sister a good student who drove a red Grand Am - we were hardly the most worldly bunch. From birth to college, I lived in the same house, in the same room, and I could lie in bed and see all the stages of my life - the Walter Payton posters, the set of pocket knives, the drawers crammed with wrinkled notes, old letters and doomed valentines. I was vaguely aware of the tumultuous throb of the world without considering I had any real place in it.

But as Love, Africa explains, my life took a major left turn after my freshman year at Cornell. I went to Africa for the first time and came back a changed man. I worked summers "throwing paint" on houses (the Da Vinci Brothers' era, which I get into in Chapter Three) and raised a little dough to go back to Africa.

First I thought I wanted to be a portrait photographer. Then I thought I wanted to be an aid worker. I had the Where (East Africa) . But no idea about the What. It was only after a crushingly lonely summer in Ethiopia that I seized on journalism.

I've had the privilege of working at some excellent publications, from the St. Petersburg Times (now the Tampa Bay Times) to the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. I've covered everything from small town carnage to a New Year's Eve possum drop in Brasstown, North Carolina, to wars, elephant slaughters and famines. My stories have appeared in GQ, the New York Review of Books, Foreign Policy, Lapham's Quarterly and National Geographic. I've been lucky in many ways, including winning several awards: the George Polk award, two Overseas Press Club awards and the Pulitzer Prize.

I live in Nairobi with my family in a house with mango trees that are often raided by the same fat monkey. For more than a decade, I've been the East Africa bureau chief for The New York Times. But there may be some big changes on the horizon soon. Please reach out to me at jeffrey@jeffreygettleman.com if you've read Love, Africa or have any questions.

And check out jeffreygettleman.com !



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