An Interview With Damien Lewis About Cobra Gold - Page 3

You have had considerable success with sales in the UK market, as I recall a #4 on the Times bestseller list. But you have not done as well in the lucrative North American arena; is Cobra Gold the breakthrough book?

That would be good, certainly, and my trusty literary agent will be working on a U.S. deal as I write this interview. My first book was published in the U.S., and -- all being well -- it is presently being completed as a feature film by a top U.S. movie company. In fact, all my books have been optioned as feature films, and I have high hopes for Operation Certain Death and Bloody Heroes to be produced as big budget movies. So, there are in-roads already, and I believe that Cobra Gold would work well for a U.S. readership. I have American readers of my military books, but they purchase them off Amazon.

You recently won an award for your coverage of the ongoing strife in the Sudan. We in the West have little idea of the situation over there. How bad is it?

It’s very bad. I’ve reported from the Sudan war zone for the last decade or more, visiting the country forty-odd times. I’ve been to all the war-ravaged areas and seen some pretty terrible stuff out there. A lot of it sticks in my mind even to this day – the sickly-sweet smell of rotting human corpses, the rasping in-breath of a child dying from starvation. But what I witnessed in the Darfur camps was worse. It was worse because it involved savagery and evil on a massive scale against children – and it beggars belief that grown men could do such things against innocence. I have young children myself, and when I interviewed an eight-year-old victim of gang rape by the murderous militias, I was sickened and it beggared belief. Brutality and savagery in war are bad enough, but when directed against innocent women and children … Darfur has suffered an orgy of bestial savagery, where grown men have allowed pure evil to possess them. Such should not be allowed to pass.

Being a war correspondent is not exactly the safest job in the world. Have you had any ‘close encounters of the really scary kind’?

Looking back on it, I’d probably have to say ‘yes’. But at the time one is taken over by a kind of madness, a blind belief in one’s own invincibility and ability to survive. That’s the nature of reporting from war – without that belief young men would not be able to do what they do. And bear in mind that fear and adrenaline are the most addictive drugs ever, and war reporting is the most addictive profession ever. And each time one survives a near-death experience – the cocked pistol thrust into the ribs by a drugged-out Burmese soldier caught smuggling; the trek into the desert drop zone where chemical weapons have been deployed, with no protective gear – then the high jump bar is set ever higher for the next one.

Article Author: Simon Barrett

Simon is an Educator in Calgary, Alberta. His own piece of idiocy is zzsimonb's rantings and he is also a contibuting editor for Blogger News Network.

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