Overpowered but not overawed

Researching her second book, I Didn’t Do It for You, Michela Wrong says she learned something that shocked her. Very often, no one around her had even heard of Eritrea, the nation in question, let alone anything of its agonising 100-year history. This cannot be true. A shrewd Africa correpondent for the Financial Times and others, and author of a superb book about Mobutu Sese Seko’s Zaire, Miss Wrong must have known what little interest Eritrea held for the average European or American. This makes the book’s excellence, her fair and thorough rendering of such unknown characters and events, all the more admirable.

Wrong argues that Eritrea’s unhappy tale should be familiar to anyone interested in the Cold War, and above all to modern-day strategists plotting forays into the poor world from shiny Washington offices. A strip of scorched Red Sea coastline, rocky plain and brittle highland, Eritrea was claimed by Italy in the late 19th century at the urging of Britain, to spite France.