In this stunning memoir, veteran Washington Post correspondent Lynne Duke takes readers on a wrenching but riveting journey through Africa during the pivotal 1990s and brilliantly illuminates a continent where hope and humanity thrive amid unimaginable depredation and horrors.

For four years as her newspaper's Johannesburg bureau chief, Lynne Duke cut a rare figure as a black American woman foreign correspondent as she raced from story to story in numerous countries of central and southern Africa. From the battle zones of Congo-Zaire to the quest for truth and reconciliation in South Africa; from the teeming displaced person’s camps of Angola and the killing field of the Rwanda genocide to the calming Indian Ocean shores of Mozambique. She interviewed heads of state, captains of industry, activists, tribal leaders, medicine men and women, mercenaries, rebels, refugees, and ordinary, hardworking people. And it is they, the ordinary people of Africa, who fueled the hope and affection that drove Duke’s reporting. The nobility of the ordinary African struggles, so often absent from accounts of the continent, is at the heart of Duke’s searing story.

MANDELA, MOBUTU, AND ME is a richly detailed, clear-eyed account of the hard realities Duke discovered, including the devastation wrought by ruthless, rapacious dictators like Mobutu Sese Seko and his successor, Laurent Kabila, in the Congo, and appalling indifference of Europeans and Americans to the legacy of their own exploitation of the continent and its people. But Duke also records with admiration the visionary leadership and personal style of Nelson Mandela in south Africa as he led his country’s inspiring transition from apartheid in the twilight of his incredible life.

Whether it was touring underground gold and copper mines, learning to carry water on her head, filing stories by flashlight or dodging gunmen, Duke’s tour of Africa reveals not only the spirit and travails of an amazing but troubled continent — it also explores the heart and fearlessness of a dedicated journalist.

From the Hardcover edition.

For four years, Lynne Duke was a rare commodity in Africa — a black American female working as a correspondent for a major newspaper. Propelled by a desire to explore and report on aspects of life in Africa not often covered by the foreign press, Duke traveled from Johannesburg to war-torn Congo-Zaire; visited burned-out villages and overpopulated, understaffed refugee camps; and descended deep underground in South Africa and Zambia, into the gold and copper mines that kept struggling economies afloat. Wherever she went, Duke sought out the opinions and stories of the Africans she met, eager to understand their histories, the problems they faced, and their visions of the future. She spoke to heads of state, captains of industry, activists, tribal leaders, medicine men and women, mercenaries, refugees, and ordinary, hardworking people. She lunched with diamond merchants on a Congo River cruise; jousted with cabinet ministers in interviews that evolved into heated, sometimes hostile, debates; and fielded all sorts of questions about America — about racism, the struggle for civil rights, and music — from the men, women, and children who crowded around her on the streets. Whether filing a news story by flashlight, or trying to avoid another rebel attack, Duke's tour of Africa reveals not only the heart of this amazing continent, but the fearlessness of a dedicated journalist.

Mandela, Mobutu, and Me is a clear-eyed account of the hard realities Duke discovered, including the devastation wrought by ruthless dictators like Mobutu and his successor, Kabila, in the Congo, the murderous activities of warlords, and the appalling indifference of Europeans and Americans to the legacy oftheir own exploitation of the continent. But Duke also records the highpoints, writing with warmth and admiration about Nelson Mandela and others who embody the visionary leadership that serves as an antidote to the chaos and killings. Most of all, she pays tribute to the irrepressible, generous spirit of ordinary Africans who, she reminds us, far outnumber the cruel and power-mad tyrants responsible for Africa's tarnished reputation.

LYNNE DUKE has been a staff writer at The Washington Post for more than fifteen years. She currently writes from the newspaper's New York bureau.

From the Hardcover edition.