The DPhotographer Into War-torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders

Starred Review. By truck, it would have taken a day or two, but the government army and the Russians were holding the roads. So instead it was a three-week march with pack animals over the mountains, like Marco Polo. Lefvre was photojournalist to a 1986 Doctors Without Borders team, off to staff M*A*S*H-style clinics in northeast Afghanistan. Fantasy doesn't get any stranger than trekking overland, techno-free, into a completely different culture. Lefvre's photos tell his story of the wonderful, intriguing Afghani people and their sweeping country, while Guibert's drawings tell the story of Lefvre telling his story. As a result, Afghani life seems more real than Lefvre'sand somehow that seems right. This magnificent and moving account of the human costs of war won the Canadian Bdlys Prize and sold hundreds of thousands of copies in Europe. The heroism of the doctors contrasts with the daily hassles of surviving in Afghanistan and with Lefvre's loneliness, exhaustion, misunderstanding, and several rash decisions that nearly cost him his life. This has the potential to attract noncomics readers and inspire another generation of humanitarian heroes; highly recommended for high school and up. Needs topic-specific cataloging.M.C. Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Listed under Biography & Autobiography · Artists, Architects, Photographers · Military · Comics & Graphic Novels