In Extremis: The Life and Death of the War Correspondent Marie Colvin

by Lindsey Hilsum Narrated by Lindsey Hilsum

Overview

The inspiring and devastating biography of Marie Colvin, the foremost war reporter of her generation, who was killed in Syria in 2012, and whose life story also forms the basis of the feature film A Private War, starring Rosamund Pike as Colvin.

When Marie Colvin was killed in an artillery attack in Homs, Syria, in 2012, at age fifty-six, the world lost a fearless and iconoclastic war correspondent who covered the most significant global calamities of her lifetime. In Extremis, written by her fellow reporter Lindsey Hilsum, is a thrilling investigation into Colvin's epic life and tragic death based on exclusive access to her intimate diaries from age thirteen to her death, interviews with people from every corner of her life, and impeccable research.

After growing up in a middle-class Catholic family on Long Island, Colvin studied with the legendary journalist John Hersey at Yale, and eventually started working for The Sunday Times of London, where she gained a reputation for bravery and compassion as she told the stories of victims of the major conflicts of our time. She lost sight in one eye while in Sri Lanka covering the civil war, interviewed Gaddafi and Arafat many times, and repeatedly risked her life covering conflicts in Chechnya, East Timor, Kosovo, and the Middle East. Colvin lived her personal life in extremis, too: bold, driven, and complex, she was married twice, took many lovers, drank and smoked, and rejected society's expectations for women. Despite PTSD, she refused to give up reporting. Like her hero Martha Gellhorn, Colvin was committed to bearing witness to the horrifying truths of war, and to shining a light on the profound suffering of ordinary people caught in the midst of conflict.

Lindsey Hilsum's In Extremis is a devastating and revelatory biography of one of the greatest war correspondents of her generation.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

★ 11/05/2018
Hilsum, international editor for Channel 4 News in England, chronicles American journalist Marie Colvin’s experiences at the front lines of war zones in this inspiring, vivid biography. Compiling information from Colvin’s personal journals and interviews with colleagues, the book traces Colvin’s path as a correspondent for Britain’s Sunday Times from Beirut in 1986 to the trenches of the Syrian civil war. A dedicated reporter, Colvin (1956–2012) stayed in dangerous situations against her editors’ wishes and wrote with a personal empathy rare in war journalism. Her boldness led to her losing her vision in her left eye from a grenade explosion on a Sri Lankan battlefield in 1999; she wore an eye patch for the rest of her life. She died at age 56 in 2012, in a bombardment of a Syrian safe house a day after she gave a live satellite interview on CNN. The book is rich in historical context, concisely summarizing international conflicts using excerpts from Colvin’s reporting (“There was no talk in the Košare Barracks about zero tolerance for returning body bags. They saw too many”). This intense biography is highly recommended for everyone, including journalism junkies, history buffs, and casual readers. (Nov.)

From the Publisher

"An extraordinary account of one reporter’s fearless and ultimately fatal dedication . . . Hilsum draws an empathetic portrait of a woman whose courage often crossed into recklessness, both in combat zones and outside them . . . Thanks to Hilsum’s deeply reported and passionately written book, [Colvin] has the full accounting that she deserves." —Joshua Hammer, The New York Times Book Review

"Colvin’s life has been memorably chronicled by Hilsum . . . it is Hilsum’s biography, written by a woman who both knew Colvin and had access to her unpublished reporting notes and private diaries—a trove of some three hundred notebooks—that seems to most closely capture her spirit." —Jon Lee Anderson, The New Yorker

"Magnificent and moving . . . [Hilsum] captures the clashing extremes of Colvin's life." —Jill Dougherty, The Washington Post

"Hilsum writes with admiration and compassionate understanding of her colleague . . . Journalists will devour Hilsum's book, but will others? They should: with Marie's story, Hilsum opens doors through which many would not peep." —Ed Vulliamy, The New York Review of Books

“In Extremis is the best biography I’ve read in what seems like ages . . . Hilsum brilliantly synthesizes it all, separating wheat from chaff and building a portrait of a remarkable and somewhat troubled woman." —Curt Schleier, Minneapolis Star-Tribune

"Extraordinarily intimate. . . Hilsum evokes a martyr in slow motion." —Megan K. Stack, Bookforum (cover review)

"One of the best biographies I have read about any journalist . . . What makes the biography and the life on which it is based so impressive is the truly heroic proportions of Colvin’s dedication to getting the story of human beings trapped in war . . . Hilsum weaves the accomplishments into the personal story." —Charles Glass, The Intercept

"Absorbing and meticulously researched." —Paul Alexander, Newsday

"What ultimately emerges from In Extremis is a generous, complicated, brave, vivacious, fully alive woman, consummately committed to her work." —Stephanie Sy-Quia, Los Angeles Review of Books

"A wonderful book — a fitting tribute, certainly, but also a well-told tale of a remarkable life." —Jane Bonham Carter, Sunday Times (U.K.)

"Marie Colvin was a one-off, eccentric, brilliant and sometimes maddening. Lindsey Hilsum does her justice." —Robert Fox, Evening Standard (U.K.)

"[In Extremis] succeeds brilliantly in honouring a brave and hugely influential journalist, while allowing the real woman, with all her strength, intelligence and human frailty, to shine through . . . Gripping and very moving." —Susan Flockhart, The National (Scotland)

"There are times when the book risks becoming a hagiography, but Hilsum avoids this by combining storytelling with asking important questions about what kind of service war correspondents perform and what ethical codes they should adhere to." —Lara Feigel, The Guardian (U.K.)

"[An] intimate biography." —The Economist

"Hilsum is able to portray Colvin in remarkable fullness . . . a rip-roaring life rendered extremely well." —Kirkus (starred review)

"Hilsum . . . has done a masterful job of telling Colvin's story. This is riveting personal and professional history, told with skill and sincerity . . . Hilsum has created something truly worthy of her subject, a biography that reads like high adventure, a masterwork that will draw well-deserved attention to a heroic witness." —Colleen Mondor, Booklist (starred review)

"This unputdownable account will inspire future journalists, especially women, and should find wide audiences among those interested in global crises and international affairs." —Karl Helicher, Library Journal (starred review)

“Writing a biography of Marie Colvin is like capturing lightning in a bottle, but Lindsey Hilsum has the knowledge and personal experience to help us understand what drew Colvin to rush towards the eye of the storm at such great risk.” —Annie Lennox

“One of the modern world’s most experienced and admired foreign correspondents, Lindsey Hilsum has now written a riveting, intimate, and deeply moving account of the epic life of her late friend and colleague, Marie Colvin. In the tradition of Martha Gellhorn, her fellow American and ultimate heroine and role model, Colvin sought to bear witness and write well about the world’s most troubled places, and for twenty-five years she did just that, over and over again, going in deep and staying too long in a dozen conflicts from Libya and Lebanon to Kosovo, and from Iraq to Afghanistan and East Timor. She lost an eye in Sri Lanka, and eventually her life in Syria, and she will be long remembered—not least because of Hilsum’s fine work in this book— as one of the great war reporters of her generation.” —Jon Lee Anderson, author of The Fall of Baghdad

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2018-08-20

British journalist Hilsum (Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution, 2012) builds on her personal experiences with reporting from war zones to relate the death-defying professional wanderings of Marie Colvin (1956-2012).

Colvin lost an eye while reporting the war in Sri Lanka, and she wore a patch for her remaining years. In 2012, while working in a deadly area of Syria, she was killed by an explosion. Thanks to journals, appointment diaries, and unpublished reporting notes that she took starting at age 13, Hilsum is able to portray Colvin in remarkable fullness. "She was the most admired war correspondent of our generation," writes the author, "one whose personal life was scarred by conflict, too, and although I counted her as a friend, I understood so little about her." By many indications, Colvin's childhood on Long Island, her adolescence, and her early work life didn't point to decades of dangerous work as a war correspondent. But from an early age, she also demonstrated an attraction to danger and hard living, including substance abuse and relationships with unstable men. Though some readers may pity Colvin for the life she chose, which included a periodic desire for motherhood that she never attained, most will view her life with great admiration. She was extremely loyal to friends and lovers, showed empathy for the dispossessed in war-torn, genocidal nations, and participated in unmatched global adventures. Hilsum skillfully explains the politics, economics, ethnic hatreds, and additional context of the nations where Colvin reported, with emphases on Libya, Chechnya, Zimbabwe, Kosovo, East Timor, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, and Syria. Mixed in with the globe-trotting, Colvin lived a complicated day-to-day life in both England and the United States, intervals explained with admirable detail and subtlety by the author, who draws on face-to-face interviews as well as the papers left behind by Colvin.

A rip-roaring life rendered extremely well.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169254907
Publisher:	Macmillan Audio
Publication date:	11/06/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	1,225,978

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