He tells his extraordinary story in unpretentious, carefully weighed prose

Fascinating

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

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

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.

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

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

This is a compassionate, front-line report from what can often seem like alien territory.

The practice of medicine is a way of living: vivid and engrossing, it stimulates senses physical and metaphysical...It is a rare skill for a doctor to be able to communicate this rich sensorium in writing. It is a delight to read the words of one who does it so well

A superb account of life on the grisly front line of the operating theatre

This slender, elegantly written memoir by a female surgeon, Gabriel Weston, is a fascinating, no holds barred account of life in the operating theatre

Through this insightful book, Weston succeeds superbly in communicating the fascinating brutal reality of a surgeon's life

Gabriel Weston's story succeeds better than any I have known...more riveting and thought-provoking than any fiction

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

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

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

This book is mesmerising

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

This much appreciated book should be a must-read for everyone who likes to travel, and should be translated into the languages of the world's tourism champions. It should also be a must-read for politicians and decision makers in development agencies to finally understand that tourism has lost the 'virginity' of a harmless leisure sector to develop into a dangerous global driving force which needs to be regulated and restricted.