Intruder in the dust

The Emma of the title was an intrepid young woman who journeyed to the Sudan in search of exotic adventure. Owing to an ill-chosen marriage she found herself at the centre of a bloody civil war. A few years later she met with an early death. One’s loins need to be well girded before embarking on this book. Emma’s Sudan, portrayed by Deborah Scroggins, is a nightmarish, Goyaesque picture.

During the 1980s, Emma McCune left her dreary Yorkshire village to work as an aid worker in the Sudan in search of thrills, romance and Sudanese men. She found an abundance of all three, although her job with the British Voluntary Service Organisation was ostensibly to teach children English and art. Aid workers are described by Scroggins as naive but well intentioned at best, wicked at worst. From the balconies of their posh hotels they watch impotently as the Islamic north battles with the pagan and Christian south.