『非自然選択』など

洋書を２冊買ったのだが、どちらも偶々北京在住の女性ジャーナリストによるもの。

Mara Hvistendahl Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys over Girls, And the Consequences of a World Full of Men Public Affairs Press, 2011

Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men

Barbara Demick*1 Besieged: Life under Fire on a Sarajevo Street Granta, 2012

Besieged: Life Under Fire on a Sarajevo Street

内戦下のサラエヴォの市民生活をレポートしたこの本は1996年にLogavina Street: Life and Death in a Sarajevo Neighborhoodとして刊行されたものの増補版。
旧ユーゴスラヴィア内戦報道を巡って、TimeOut Shanghai３月号に載ったCharlotte Middlehurstによるインタヴュー（p.58)から抜書きしておく；

How did you first get into this line of reporting?*2
I had no intention of becoming a war correspondent, it just kind of happened that way. I originally went to Europe to cover what was supposed to be the economic changes there three years after the reunification of Germany, but as it happened the story during my time was the war in the former Yugoslavia―I don't think I wrote a single story on economics in four years.

How do you deal with the emotional stress of covering such stories?
Things can get upsetting, but this can be a positive thing―I think it's very important not to get too cynical or jaded. You can't write with passion unless you have that sense of outrage. The power of adrenaline can't be discounted either; it's a very potent drug and often when you're with other people, you're not particularly frightened. It's only afterwards that you think, 'Holy shit, why did I do that!'
What's the craziest thing you've ever done for a story?
I once tried to walk from Macedonia to Kosovo when the border was closed. I was with a friend from the Washington Post and we realised we were being idiots and we turned around. I drove over a mountain of mud to cover the tsunami in 2004 and that was pretty crazy. It's not so much the physical things―it's about obsessively pursuing the same story.

*1:See also http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20100718/1279394540

*2:太字はインタヴュアの言葉。