An Imperfect Offering

Dec 23, 2024 3:38 AM

Author:James Orbinski

Born in Britain in 1960, James Orbinski's family moved to Canada when he was seven years old. As a young man, he became a medic to learn how to help, and deal with, the suffering of others. From then on he was plunged into many highly demanding situations, including being Head of Mission for Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) during the Rwandan genocide; engaging with the politics of humanitarian work as the President of MSF; being in New York when the twin towers of the World Trade Center fell on September 11; co-founding Dignitas International (an AIDS charity); and finally, returning to Rwanda on the 10th anniversary of the crisis there.

In An Imperfect Offering, Orbinski not only tells his own inspiring story but is also remarkably provocative about what governments and agencies should and shouldn't be doing to help the world's poor and very sick. At the same time, he addresses what part each of us can play, so that we never lose sight of the dignity of those being helped, or deny them the right to act in their own lives. His conclusion is blunt and profound: 'Humanity is lost or saved one person at a time, one intention at a time, and one action at a time. There are no utopias waiting to be born. There is only what we do - what you choose to do...'

Reviews

He tells his extraordinary story in unpretentious, carefully weighed prose

—— Observer

Fascinating

—— Daily Mail

James Orbinski has lived for years in the middle of the worst that humans can be, and somehow emerged with both his compassion and his desire to understand us intact...the stories he has to tell are some of the most powerful I have ever read

—— Stephanie Nolen, author of 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa

In a narrative of grace and power, [Orbinski] displays the intense components of his remarkable life: integrity, compassion and principle

—— Stephen Lewis, former UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa and author of Race Against Time

An essential text for our dire times. Orbinski plunges into the heartbreak, the maelstrom, the moral dilemmas of the genocide territories of the world - Rwanda, Kosovo, Sudan - and finds there enough courage and redemption for us all to feel there is hope for our sad humanity.

—— Ariel Dorfman

Orbinski captures exactly the horror of the surgeon overwhelmed by casualties...It is his sheer, human, stick-at-your-post courage that is most estimable

—— Financial Times Weekend

Clarity, compassion and commitment are presented in spades in this book

—— L Gen Romeo Dallaire, author of Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda

Excellent

—— Sunday Times

Strangely delightful ... Dillon's book is constantly intelligent

—— Scotland on Sunday

You don't need to be a hypochondriac to enjoy this series of discursive, insightful essays that are full of quirky details and fascinating anecdotes

—— Mail on Sunday

Illuminating

—— Philip Hoare , Sunday Telegraph

Eloquent and incisive

—— Boyd Tonkin , Independent

Dillon's mind is as interesting as those of the people he writes about ... bizarrely unputdownable

—— Eileen Battersby , Irish Times

Glinting like a tray of instruments, her prose is satisfyingly precise

—— Victoria Segal , The Guardian

A curiously thrilling read, written with an elegance heightened by its clarity and economy

—— Elizabeth Day , Observer

A valuable and unflinching account, since it so clearly tells the truth

—— Christopher Hart , The Sunday Times

This book is mesmerising

—— William Leith , Scotsman

Her description of the struggle to remain individual and hence moral is her real achievement. This, to me, is what female writing has to do, and she does it with style and humour and beauty

—— Rachel Cusk

Richard Dawkin's new book... gives the fact-rejecters their just deserts

—— Daily Telegraph

The book is full of evidence, some familiar and some new. Its case is presented in a manner succinct, clear and sometimes vivid

—— Daily Telegraph

No other book currently available approaches Dawkin's comprehensive yet accessible treatment of the extraordinarily diverse and massive body of data that drives ineluctably to the same conclusion

—— National Center for Science Education

The Greatest Show on Earth is a lucid, thorough and often exciting survey of evolution and takes in rats' teeth, dogs, bacteria, the so-called missing link, crustaceans, giraffe anatomy, hummingbirds, chimpanzees, enzymes - you name it. It is informed in nearly every paragraph by Mr. Dawkins's irrepressible enthusiasm

—— Sarah Lyall , New York Times

The Greatest Show on Earth... is essential reading. I would currently rate it... as the best overall book on the evidence for Evolution

—— Marc E. Miquel , SCOPE

This is a magnificent book of wonderstanding: Richard Dawkins combines an artist's wonder at the virtuosity of nature with a scientist's understanding of how it comes to be

—— Matt Ridley, author of "Nature via Nurture"

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