2010 Book prize long list

The Wizard of the Nile: The Hunt for Africa’s Most Wanted

Matthew Green

Published by: Portobello Books

Somewhere in the jungles of Uganda, there hides a fugitive rebel-leader: he is said to take his orders direct from the spirit world and, together with his ragged army of brutalised child soldiers, he has left a bloody trail of devastation across his country. Joseph Kony is now an internationally-wanted criminal, and yet nobody really knows who he is or what he is fighting for. Intrigued by the myths, Matthew Green heads off into a war zone, meeting the victims, the peacemakers and the regional powerbrokers, as he tracks down the man himself. The Wizard of the Nile is the first book to peel back the layers of mysticism and murky politics surrounding Kony, to shine a searching light onto this forgotten conflict, and to tell the gripping human story behind an inhumane war and a humanitarian crisis.