In the company of Emma McCune, misguided though she might have seemed to some, Ms Scroggins takes the reader by the hand into the hot dust of southern Sudan and the politics of the belly, where black meets white, rich meets poor and the fat white paunch of the West gets to look upon starving Africa's distended stomach.

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At the end, the reader is left with a strong sense of Ms Royal as a difficult character, but little idea about what fires her.

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