The Night Wanderers

On an average night in northern Uganda, tens of thousands of children head for the city centers to avoid capture by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). They find refuge on the floors of aid agencies or in the streets. In recent years, the civil society was almost completely destroyed by the LRA, itself made up almost entirely of kidnapped children. Piecing together what has been broken is proving to be a nearly impossible task. Polish journalist Wojciech Jagielski inserts himself into this hellish landscape and finds a way to speak of these children and their wounded world.

In The Night Wanderers, Jagielski shows his readers the horror of children who have been abducted from their homes and forced to kill their own family members; children who, even after they have escaped the LRA, carry the weight of their own acts of murder on their young shoulders. Jagielski portrays Uganda through their eyes as well as his own. Carrying on the rich tradition of Ryszard Kapuœciñski, Jagielski digs himself deep into the Ugandan landscape and emerges with a compassionate, incisive, painful, magisterial account of a world that is just starting to pull itself out of the horrors of war. The original Polish edition of The Night Wanderers is shortlisted for the Nike Prize, considered to be the most prestigious literary award in Poland.

“Wojciech Jagielski’s Night Wanderers in not only a bitter story about a forgotten civil war in Uganda, but it is also a literary masterpiece, a reportage in every sense of the word.” –Wiadomosci24 (Poland)

“Wojciech Jagielski has already achieved recognition for his reporting on the most inflamed points around our globe. [His latest work] will only confirm his reputation.” - Ryszard Kapuœciñski, on Jagielski’s Towers of Stone: The Battle of Wills in Chechnya

“Wojciech Jagielski’s book sets new standards for gritty reporting of Russia’s most miserable corner, and the dreadful damage done to it by both outsiders and the Chechen’s own leaders . . . The book brings to life the danger, squalor and misery of daily life in Chechnya with almost unbearable clarity.” -The Economist, on Jagielski’s Towers of Stone: The Battle of Wills in Chechnya