The Foreign Service Journal, November 2009

crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, among many other foreign policy challenges. During a long and distinguished career, he served as Lyndon Johnson’s ambassador to Libya, Richard Nixon’s ambassador to Indonesia and Jimmy Carter’s ambassa- dor to the Philippines. He also served as assistant secre- tary of State for African affairs during the Nixon administration, and under secretary of political affairs during the Carter administration. After retiring, David Newsom was director of the In- stitute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown Uni- versity and also served as acting dean and professor of the School of Foreign Service. He was the author of sev- eral books, including Diplomacy Under a Foreign Flag: When Nations Break Relations (Georgetown University Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, 1990) and The Im- perial Mantle: The United States, Decolonization and the Third World (Indiana University Press, 2001). Amb. Newsom died on March 30, 2008. The Unofficial Diplomat: A Memoir Joanne Grady Huskey, New Academia/Scarith Books, 2009, $22, hardcover, 208 pages. On June 4, 1989, Joanne Grady Huskey was in Tiananmen Square, where she witnessed the horror of a government attacking its own peo- ple. On Aug. 7, 1998, she was in the basement of Embassy Nairobi with her two small children when al-Qaida bombed the building. Unofficial Diplomat , part of the Association for Diplo- matic Studies and Training’sMemoirs andOccasional Pa- pers Series, is the memoir of an ordinary American who is married to a Foreign Service officer. Caught in ex- traordinary circumstances, she was able to do some ex- traordinary things. In this book, she tells why living and working abroad is critical for Americans, and why she continues to do so, even in an increasingly complex and dangerous world. In addition to her experiences during the “Beijing Spring” and, later, while helping Kenyan victims of the Embassy Nairobi bombing, Huskey recounts her time in Chennai, when India began to open up, and her work with disabled people in China, guided by Deng Xiao- ping’s son, Deng Pufang. Joanne Grady Huskey, an actress and writer, has lived in Beijing, Chennai, Nairobi and Taiwan with her FSO husband and their two children. She co-founded Global Adjustments in India, a company that specializes in cross- cultural training, and the American International School of Chennai. Earlier, she was international director of very special arts at the John F. Kennedy Center inWash- ington, D.C. She lives in Bethesda, Md. FICTION The Beggars’ Pursuit Christian Filostrat, Africana Homestead Legacy Publishers, 2007, $36, hardcover, 336 pages. This novel, first of a projected trilogy, is full of detail, poetry and suspense — the perfect combina- tion for an international political thriller. Filostrat employs his expertise in African languages and cultures to craft a nuanced world so full of realism and humanity that one may lapse into thinking they are reading artful nonfiction. This work provides a some- times startlingly accurate (though with an understand- able dash of artistic license) reflection of how American foreign policy is perceived and reacted to in certain un- stable, at times brutal parts of the world. Set in the realm of Mobutu-era Zaire, the novel re- volves around the betrayal and redemption of Zairian Ambassador to the United States Molu Sakeseba. Bris- tling with plots and counterplots, the narrative captures the venality and treachery of the opponents of democ- racy who seized power in some states in the post-colo- nial period. Christian Filostrat, a retired FSO, served in Sene- gal, Congo, Romania and Haiti. His last posting was as diplomat-in-residence at Howard University from 1999 to 2002. Currently living in Paris, where he works to support the rights of minorities around the world, Filostrat is also the author of a nonfiction work, Negri- tude Agonistes (see p. 20). Believe Me Nina Killham, Plume, 2009, $15, paperback, 304 pages. How does the son of a firm atheist express his teenage rebel- lion? By befriending a gang of evangelical Christians and study- ing the Bible, of course. Killham’s latest novel broaches the eternally sensitive topics of faith and estrangement, pain and 32 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 9