Contact Wounds by Jonathan Kaplan

ISBN: 9781770100121

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Picador Africa, January 1, 2005

Paperback, 278 pages

From the author of the New York Times Notable Book, The Dressing Station : “A gripping memoir” of a doctor’s education on the battlefield ( Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ). Inspired by his father’s time as a military surgeon in World War II, Jonathan Kaplan became a doctor and was appointed to a post at a woefully understaffed South African general hospital in a black township. Fleeing apartheid, he traveled the globe in search of sanctuary, experiencing riots, tropical fevers, political upheaval, and a jungle search for a lost friend. Kaplan eventually landed in Angola, taking charge of a combat-zone hospital, the only surgeon for 160,000 civilians, where he was exposed daily to the horrors of warfare. This “revealing” memoir unflinchingly captures the experiences of a man who’s devoted his career and his life to saving people caught in the crossfire of war ( Los Angeles Times ). “[Kaplan] tells stories with the rawness and incomprehensibility of life itself. His words transport the reader to places most would fear to go.” — Publishers Weekly