Capturing decades of turbulent history

As an award-winning photojournalist and part of the “Bang-Bang Club”, Greg Marinovich has covered war and conflict all over Africa and the world.

In Shots from the Edge he recounts his experiences in these conflict zones, recalling interviews with the perpetrators and the victims of violence, from rebels, child soldiers and terrorists to peacekeepers, aid workers, rape survivors, orphans and amputees.

The book takes the reader throughout South Africa, and to Angola, Mozambique, Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Chechnya, Palestine and many other contested zones. 

With compassion and care, Marinovich documents more than two decades’ worth of turbulent history and reveals the people involved in the conflict. Some of the moments are deeply moving and profound; others so surreal as to blur into insanity.

From coming under fire with United Nations peacekeeping troops in the Lašva Valley (Bosnia) and being escorted around Mogadishu by a crew of gunmen for hire, to running through the streets of Johannesburg as Inkatha and the ANC faced off at Shell House, the reader is exposed to people, places and experiences that would otherwise be difficult to comprehend.  

The accounts in Shots from the Edge are at once insightful, tragic, shocking and occasionally humorous, but above all, they are a poignant reminder of the brutality and indignity of war, and man’s capacity for cruelty.

• Article provided by Penguin Random House