No Ordinary Assignment

Jane Ferguson, a journalist who has reported from some of the most dangerous conflicts and humanitarian emergencies of recent decades, sets out her own story in this debut memoir. Growing up in Northern Ireland during the 1980s and 1990s, she learned early to live alongside sectarian bombings, threats and army checkpoints on her way to school. Books by travel writers Dervla Murphy and Martha Gellhorn gave her an escape from a difficult home life, and a chance to study Arabic in Yemen opened a path toward the reporting career she had imagined.

With no family money or industry contacts, Ferguson started out in Middle East reporting working mostly alone, often with nothing more than a borrowed camera. Television networks questioned her accent and appearance and wanted more gunfire in her stories. She nonetheless kept going into dangerous places, driven by a belief that telling the experiences of ordinary civilians caught in war mattered, whatever the personal cost.

The book follows her coverage of the Arab Spring protests in Yemen and her rare access to rebel-held Syria, where foreign reporters were barred. It also recounts her time in Kabul in 2021, when the Taliban took the city and she was among the last Western journalists at the airport while thousands of Afghans, some of them her colleagues, tried to get out.

Part war correspondent's account and part personal history, the memoir asks how a girl from a troubled childhood became one of the most respected female journalists of her generation. It will appeal to readers interested in conflict reporting, the Middle East, Northern Ireland and the realities of building a career in journalism.