The Photographer / Guibert et al.

The Photographer: into war-torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders by Emmanuel Guibert, Didier Lefevre, and Frederic Lemercier. 267 p.

In 1986, Didier Lefevre, a French photographer, accompanied a Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres) group on one of their missions into Afghanistan. This book is a record of his journey, combining some of his photos with more traditional graphic art by Guibert to tell the story. The situations the group endures just to get where they're needed, and then the conditions under which they practice medicine, are fascinating and quite moving. However, the last third of the book covers Lefevre striking out on his own because he's in too much of a hurry to return home and doesn't want to wait for the carefully planned trip accompanying the others. He can't really speak the language (he does have a phrase book), and bad things happen to him on this leg of the trip; but it was hard for me to feel much sympathy for him at this point, because he brought the trouble on directly on himself. Definitely a worthwhile read though, especially the MSF parts.