Michela Wrong Biography
Michela Wrong (b. 1961) was educated at Camden School for Girls‚ a north London comprehensive‚ before attending Jesus College‚ Cambridge‚ where she took a degree in Philosophy and Social Sciences and spent a lot of time rowing.
After taking a Diploma in Journalism in Cardiff‚ she joined Reuters News Agency. As a foreign correspondent for Reuters she was posted to first Rome and then Paris‚ where the stories she covered ranged from papal pronouncements to fashion collections‚ the revolution in Romania to the Kurdish refugee crisis.
In 1992 she was sent to Ivory Coast‚ marking the start of a decade?long association with Africa. When the genocide began in the central African state of Rwanda two years later‚ she was working as freelance journalist in neighboring Zaire ? one of only two international correspondents based in Kinshasa ? and was soon reporting on both the genocide’s fallout and the implosion of President Mobutu?s rotten regime. She then moved to Nairobi where‚ as the Africa correspondent for the British newspaper the Financial Times‚ she traveled widely in East‚ West and Central Africa‚ covering famines and insurgencies‚ coups and civil wars.
Her book on Mobutu‚ a study in corruption and an examination of the West?s role in the collapse of the nation now called the Democratic Republic of Congo‚ was published in 2000. In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz won the PEN James Sterne prize for nonfiction and has been regarded by many African reviewers as an allegory of their own‚ graft?ridden regimes.
Wrong writes regularly for the New Statesman magazine. She currently lives in London.
This biography was last updated on 05/15/2009.
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