Six Months in Sudan: A Young Doctor in a War-Torn Village

James Maskalyk set out for the contested border town of Abyei, Sudan in 2007 as Medicins Sans Frontieres’ newest medical doctor in the field. Equipped with his experience as an emergency physician in a Western hospital and his desire to understand the most desperate parts of the world, Maskalyk returned home six months later more affected by the experience, the people and the place than he had anticipated. Six Months in Sudan is an illuminating and affecting account of saving lives in one of the most dangerous places on Earth. Six Months in Sudan began as a blog that he wrote from his hut in Sudan in an attempt to bring his family and friends closer to his hot, hot days. It is a story about humans: the people of Abyei who suffer its hardship because it is their home, and the doctors, nurses and countless volunteers who leave their homes with the tools to make another’s easier to endure. With great hope and insight, Maskalyk illuminates a distant place – its heat, its people, its poverty, its war – to inspire possibilities for action.

Reviews of Six Months in Sudan: A Young Doctor in a War-Torn Village

'Visceral and immediate … As medical literature this book excels; as an insight into that exhilarating, life changing step into chaos his account can hardly be bettered.' Jonathan Kaplan, British Medical Journal