Janine
DiGiovanni
 ...Author, long-time war correspondent; Senior Correspondent for The Times of London and Vanity Fair; Contributor to Newsweek, The New York Times, Granta and others
Janine DiGiovanni has been working in war zones throughout the world for over two decades. Her focus is on human rights abuse and the impact war has on civilians. She has reported from Afghanistan, Israel, Zimbabwe, Zaire, Rwanda, Pakistan, Algeria, East Timor, Ivory Coast, Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo, Liberia, Somalia, Nigeria , Sierra Leone, Libya, Egypt, Tunisia and other locations since 1991.
Janine is a prolific writer. Her latest book is GHOSTS BY DAYLIGHT: Love, War, and Redemption (Random House, 2011). Her previous book, THE PLACE AT THE END OF THE WORLD (Bloomsbury, UK) was published in 2006. Prior to that, MADNESS VISIBLE: A Memoir of War (Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), was called one of the best books ever written about war. Earlier, she wrote THE QUICK AND THE DEAD: Under Siege in Sarajevo (Phoenix House, 1994) and her first effort, AGAINST THE STRANGER: Lives Under Occupation (Viking Penguin, 1992). She also contributed the introduction to the international best seller, ZLATA’S DIARY: A CHILD’S VIEW OF SARAJEVO (2006).
In May, 2005, the A&E Network premiered a documentary produced by two-time Academy Award-winning director, Barbara Kopple. BEARING WITNESS is about Janine and four other female war correspondents and their work. A major motion picture, based on Janine’s book, MADNESS VISIBLE, is in pre-production and will be released in 2013.
Janine DiGiovanni has won four major journalism awards, including two Amnesty International Awards, Britain's Foreign Correspondent of the Year and National Magazine Award.
She is a frequent contributor to CNN, ITN, Sky Channel 4 News, BBC World Service, MSNBC, and National Public radio (NPR).
Janine DiGiovanni has a B.A. in English Literature from The University of Maine (1983); an M.A. in European Languages and Literature from The University of London (1985) and a M.F.A. from The University of Iowa Writer's Workshop (1986).
She resides with her son in Paris, France.
Janine Di Giovanni is available for speeches, debates and seminars exclusively through the MasterMedia Speakers Bureau.
Suggested Lecture Topics:
More Than Collateral Damage: The Effect of War on Women and Children
A War Reporter’s Life: The Affects of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome
The Long-Term Impact of the Arab Spring Movement
Women and Feminism in the Arab World
Why Do They Hate Us?: How Others in the World Perceive the USA
For full reviews, video links, blog posts, fan page link, picture history, myriad articles and more commentary about and from Janine di Giovanni, please click below:
www.janinedigiovanni.com
About GHOSTS BY DAYLIGHT
Since the age of twenty-three, Janine Di Giovanni has devoted her life to traveling to some of the most dangerous war zones to record events on behalf of the voiceless. From Sarajevo to East Timor, from Sierra Leone to Afghanistan , Di Giovanni has spent some twenty years on the run and under siege.
Along the way she meets Bruno--in the lobby of the Sarajevo Holiday Inn. Their passionate affair comes to an apparent end when they break up in Paris, in Montparnasse, over cups of hot chocolate. Bruno moves to Kurdistan to follow the Peshmerga; Janine goes back to Sarajevo. But nine years later, when Di Giovanni is on her way to Algiers, they pick up more or less where they left off. Ready to give up the game, they agree to return to Paris together and give settled life a chance. They have a baby boy--Luca. Fearless under fire, Di Giovanni now finds herself terrified for the first time: "My son was born nine months after I came home from Iraq . When I first saw him, seven weeks premature and vulnerable, it seemed impossible that I'd ever want to report a war again."
But a life lived in war is inevitably a damaged life. While in Paris, Bruno succumbs to post-traumatic stress, to debilitating back pain, to alcoholism. Di Giovanni watches as the great passionate love story of her life begins to crumble, as the handsome adventurer she fell in love with fades into an embittered man. Professionally accustomed to the trials of being a woman in a man's realm, she now finds herself personally thrust into the role of provider, care-giver. It's all she can do to keep the pieces of their lives together.
With stunning scenes of action during war, heart-wrenching accounts of personal loss, and moments of lasting love and real redemption, Ghosts by Daylight is the unforgettable story of a life lived passionately.
REVIEWS OF GHOSTS BY DAYLIGHT
“With a gripping narrative that spans much of the globe, Ghosts by Daylight captures poignantly the romance of the war correspondent’s life as well as its physical and psychological hardships. Di Giovanni’s is a lyrical tale, haunted and haunting, of a passionate love affair that comes apart under fire, both on assignment abroad and at home in the quiet of living room and kitchen. She's been in all the hot spots of our era, and has suffered the cruel consequences, but she triumphs in the end over pain and trauma to dwell in a newfound contentment of her own devising.”
Amy Wilentz, author of The Rainy Season
“Only a writer as tender and intuitive as Janine di Giovanni can offer herself as a witness to some of the world’s most barbarous and nightmarish wars while also deconstructing the very private unraveling of a once-beautiful love story. Ghosts by Daylight, just like its author, is brave, heroically and elegantly told, and brutally honest.”
Fatima Bhutto, author of Songs of Blood and Sword
“Janine di Giovanni writes with unblinking courage about war, death, marriage, motherhood, loss, love, redemption, fear—indeed, about all the world's most pressing risks and dangers. She has seen far more of life than the rest of us, so she knows more than we do—and yet she lays down
her memoir with touching and deeply honest humility. Her writing here (as ever in her remarkable career) is a great and important achievement.”
Elizabeth Gilbert, author, Eat, Pray, Love and Committed
“Janine di Giovanni has written a profound and beautiful book about the two great human struggles: love and war. That so much hope could shine through a story of such violence and destruction is testimony to the human spirit and, of course, the breathtaking clarity of Di Giovanni’s prose. It is a brilliant book about things that concern us all.”
Sebastian Junger, author of War
"Di Giovanni writes with sadness, love and generosity ... turned the harsh facts of a life full of extremity and chaos into a story of defiant elegance ..."
The Telegraph, 30 June 2011
"Di Giovanni has constructed this bitter and illuminating story with admirable artistry ..."
The Times (of London), 16 July 2011
"Emotional battles and how to survive them are the principal themes in Ms di Giovanni's beautifully written memoir ...Ghosts by Daylight is no misery memoir, but a powerful lesson. Two people can love each other deeply, have a child, but still, in the end, not make it together."
The Economist, 30 July 2011
"A blisteringly raw emotional memoir of what it’s like to switch from being an international war correspondent to civilian family life in Paris. The Times’ senior foreign correspondent Di Giovanni weaves in memories of terrifying times in Iraq and the former Yugoslavia as she
navigates a new marriage and baby and is horrified to find that so-called ordinary life can be much tougher than any war."
Voyager, August 2011
"Only a writer as tender and intuitive as Janine di Giovanni can offer herself as a witness to some of the world's most barbarous and nightmarish wars while also deconstructing the very private unraveling of a once-beautiful love story. Ghosts by Daylight,/ just like its author, is brave, heroically and elegantly told, and brutally honest."
Fatima Bhutto
"Splendid prose from an American writer"
Philip Smucker
"Janine di Giovanni's book is a must read. A fascinating tale of love and war ..."
Catherine Rubin Kermorgant
"Ghosts by Daylight isthe only book successfully exposing the disturbing personal conflicts inevitable for war correspondents."
Don Boyd
"A good journalist is not just someone who dares to go where the story is, but someone who is also able to maintain his/her humility knowing s/he was one of the few to cover the story. That's why Janine is one of the best!"
Peyman Pejman
REVIEWS OF THE PLACE AT THE END OF THE WORLD
“War, disease ... and plumbers : Di Giovanni's clear, straightforward prose, skillfully tailored to snag idling magazine readers, often avoids analysis, either political or psychological. It's sufficient that she's brave enough (like many of the people she meets) to bear witness in places and situations the rest of us - unless we're very unlucky - would much rather have nothing to do with, unless by proxy.”
The Guardian, 14 January 06
“The Place at the End of the World is a collection of some 20 long articles, most of them originally written for the Times or Vanity Fair. War news has a short shelf-life, and the pieces could have seemed dated, but paradoxically it is the familiarity of the material that gives the collection its edge. Depressingly little has changed in the past decade. Wars that were meant to end in weeks have dragged on for years. Afghanistan, Somalia, Chechnya, Israel and Iraq are all in varying states of civil war. Read together, these pieces provide a terrifying picture of the anarchical and appallingly brutal nature of conflict, with its druggy boy soldiers, its cheap and proliferating weapons, its seemingly random viciousness.”
Caroline Moorehead, The New Statesman
“Being a war correspondent is a privilege and a burden. The privilege comes from having firsthand access to the events that shape history. But it can also be a painful responsibility to trespass through the most intimately horrific moments of people's lives. The trick is to tell their stories in full, compassionate detail while illuminating their relevance to the bigger picture. Janine di Giovanni strikes just that balance in "The Place at the End of the World". ... She recounts compelling tales of her experiences, from the flirty girls in Kabul who want to learn to dance after the fall of the Taliban to 18-year-old Sia, a former child soldier in Sierra Leone who is so adept at cutting off people's limbs that she is charged with training captured 5- and 6-year olds. Di Giovanni shares her heartache over the murder of a close colleague in Sierra Leone, as well as her disbelief when she learns that a close Iraqi friend was an agent under Saddam Hussein. Journalists, di Giovanni poignantly reminds us, are only human, after all.”
Ginanne Brownell, Newsweek, Feb. 20, 2006
“Sometimes, books by journalists recounting their tales of daring-do can be quite boring. Indeed, the recent books of several household names spring to mind, as does their well-deserved remaindered fate. This book does not fall into this category. Not only does it deserve attention but, more importantly, I think it will stand the test of time. ... This book is a collection of much of her best work but what makes it interesting is that it is not just that. If it were a straightforward
collection of frontline tales, as graphic and heartrending as they are, I don't know if that would have been enough. What makes this book is the interlacing of war stories with her story.”
The Observer, Feb. 5, 2006
REVIEWS OF MADNESS VISIBLE
“A stunning portrait of contemporary war ... It is a terrifying account.”
Independent
“One of our generation's finest foreign correspondents ... excellent.”
Daily Telegraph
“Di Giovanni has written so much more than reports of battles waged, won or lost. It's an account of life lived in extremis ... Read this book and you may begin to understand what war looks like and feels like, or even smells like.”
Spectator
“If you read no other book about the Balkan wars, read this one.”
Philip Caputo
”Di Giovanni is superb - an extraordinarily brave war correspondent and a wonderful writer as well. What a combination!.”
William Shawcross
“Unforgettable ... vivid, compassionate ... Few writers can match her evocations of individual suffering in wartime.”
Newsweek
“Powerful and moving ... di Giovanni's accounts of her time on the front lines are vivid and dramatic. She is a gifted and humane reporter, with a novelist's eye for detail ... a book of worth and purpose.”
Literary Review
“Janine di Giovanni has described war in a way that almost makes me think it never needs to be described again. This is it, modern war: If you don't want to know what it's really like, don't pick up this book. I can honestly say that I finished this book a wiser, more compassionate person than when I started.”
Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm
“Di Giovanni is a war reporter whose courage is matched only by her compassion for her subjects.”
Evening Standard
“Janine di Giovanni took ten years out of her life to report on all those terrible wars in the former Yugoslavia. She tells us what it was really like on the frontline - the squalor, the terror, the barbarity, and the randomness of death. But there was also comradeship, hope, glory and, occasionally, the triumph of the human spirit.”
Phillip Knightley
“Modern war has become ever more Satanic, and never more so than in the Balkans in the 1990s. Janine di Giovanni is our Virgil, guiding us through the circles of that man-made hell: Sarajevo, Kosovo, Pristina. Her depictions of the fighting recall the best correspondence to come out of the Spanish Civil War. Her portraits of the victims are moving, but she really shines in bringing to chilling life the perpetrators of "ethnic cleansing" - today's euphemism for genocide.”
Philip Caputo
“...searing chronicle of a decade's worth of ethnocide in the former Yugoslavia ...The tales she tells would do Martha Gellhorn proud, though they do not make for easy reading ...Wholly memorable, entirely unsettling: one of the best pieces of reportage to come from the Balkan abattoir.”
Kirkus Reviews
“An unflinching and often harrowing volume ... Di Giovanni survived her experiences to tell the tale, and she does so admirably. The lessons learned are ours to take away.”
Waterstone's Books Quarterly
“Gutsy ... harrowing and humane.”
Instyle
“Always compassionate, never sentimental, di Giovanni gives voice to the victims, perpetrators and architects of the conflict.”
Marie Claire
“Di Giovanni provides lucid historical background, deft sketches of the players, and unflinching accounts of the effects of war on its victims ... she's better, and braver, than most.”
Time Out
“A devastating memoir of the Balkans ... a harrowing firsthand account of a region's spiral into madness ... Di Giovanni has written a tragic book that vividly memorializes the millions who suffered in the name of religion, nationality and ego.”
Publishers Weekly
“Janine di Giovanni's fine book on the Yugoslav wars brings the personalities, tragedies and abominations of the conflict painfully to life ... Di Giovanni's is possibly the best journalist's book to come out of former Yugoslavia ... her truth is more powerful than his fiction ... she manages to convey the fear, boredom, and slivovica-soaked horror of the Yugoslav wars as few have done.”
Lara Marlowe, Irish Times
“Madness Visible is full of gripping reportage about the horrors of life during wartime ... Di Giovanni stands out in the pack of British war correspondents ... Not only does di Giovanni elicit shocking testimony from survivors, but her writing about their plights is especially moving.”
Alex Bellos, New York Newsday
“The veteran reporter has a keen eye for detail and dialogue ... di Giovanni comes into her own when recounting the earlier war in Bosnia.”
Washington Post
“Powerful and disturbing ... a description of today's uneasy peace in the former Yugoslavia that should worry us all ... This book is fascinating on the effect of war on reporters. Are they hardened by what they see? Di Giovanni does not spare us the blood and guts ... here is a reporter whose sense of humanity has been deepened by her experience.”
Mail on Sunday
“In this important book Janine di Giovanni picks her way confidently across the no man's land of the female war correspondent ... there are few outsiders who better understand what has happened in the Balkans in our time ... Madness Visible is the story of all wars.”
Sara Wheeler, Guardian
“It is a powerful, passionate account, and well worth waiting for ... We feel her sense of betrayal and disenchantment ... the strength of this memoir lies in its understanding that there was no monopoly of suffering in these wars, and no monopoly of evil ... She returned time and time again to seek answers to some permanently troubling questions.”
Martin Bell, The Times (of London)
“It is compelling reportage at its best; grisly and depressing at times, of course, but also revealing.”
Economist
“Di Giovanni offers a heartrending portrait of survivors salvaging their losses under the spectre of continuing civil unrest.”
Vogue
“She takes a sharp instrument and probes into the most tender places of those individuals caught up in and trapped by a tragedy ... it is gripping.”
San Francisco Chronicle
“A standout among the many accounts of war in former Yugoslavia.”
Library Journal
“An impressive overview of the disintegration of Yugoslavia.”
Booklist
“Powerful ... Moving ... Full of gripping reportage about the horrors of life during wartime.”
Newsday
“This in one of the best books written about war.”
Arizona Republic
“Illuminating ... Moving ... [Her] stream-of-consciousness approach ...imbues the book with its quiet but undeniable emotional power ... It hurts like hell to read these accounts of the agony, fear, despair, cruelty and madness suffered by victims on all sides of the Balkan conflicts ... [Despite the] gloom that pervades each page, these accounts remain compelling because of Di Giovanni's resolve to grasp each individual's frail sense of hope and shattered human dignity.”
San Antonio Express News
“Di Giovanni has covered every violent conflict since the Bosnian conflict in 1992 ... her book is set in Yugoslavia, but it is not just about Yugoslavia. It's a book very much about how people truly
experience war. She has captured the essence of war, its horror and its brutality.”
Asbury Park Press
“A life of bullet-dodging, staring into mass graves and hanging around with jittery, pimply soldiers ... di Giovanni's latest book centers on her experience in the Balkans in the nineties ... what it lacks in sweet romance, it makes up in passion ... she's spent her career watching
other people's stories unfold.”
Women's Wear Daily
“Madness Visible encapsulates the integral aspects of a war correspondent's life - bravery and determination, discomfort and sheer bloody mindedness, terror and uncertainty ...Madness Visible is a salutary and essential read. Salutary because it makes you realize that the civilizing effect of society is as thin as gossamer and can be lost so easily. Di Giovanni is painfully eloquent.”
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