Ron Ridenour: "Book Review: Andre Vitchek's 'Point of No Return'" @ This Can't Be Happening!

Point of No Return, a mixture of novel and autobiography, is an engaging story of an intrepid war correspondent who resembles a saucy crime detective. It is superb story-telling.

Andre Vltchek’s just re-released Point of No Return is a revised third edition. First published in 2005, the French edition was widely praised, with one French critic compared the authors writing with that of Malraux and Hemingway.

The hero is Karel, who has covered dozens of foreign wars and internal liberation struggles. Most of the book concerns Israel-Palestine and Latin America, especially Peru. Indonesia’s aggression against East Timor and Egypt also play important roles. There are also stops in Paris, New York and Japan.

The author Andre has traveled to three-fourths of the world’s countries over two decades, communicating to whomever he can reach about the state of the world. He has written a score of non-fiction, fiction and poetry books. He is also a photographer and documentary film-maker.

The robust story flows rhythmically, sensually, enticingly. It is a sad reality that the veteran war correspondent encounters sometimes sickening things, which are just a reality of living and dying for three-fourths of the world’s seven billion people.

In Andre’s own words:

“Politicians and economists are blurring the whole picture…A small group of historically aggressive nations is still ruling the world. The economic system which it promotes has nothing to do with humanism, with solidarity, compassion, willingness to share. We have billions of people rotting in gutters all over the world; hundreds of millions of people dying from curable or at least controllable diseases. The rich world is still plundering the rest of the planet; stealing raw materials, employing people for a pittance.... If poor nations resist, the rich world stages coups or something worse.... And it is all legitimized through the United Nations, which was sidelined, made truly impotent...”

For the rest of this review by RON RIDENOUR in ThisCantBeHappening, the new independent three-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1756

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