Numb thrusts us into the memoir of Alan Buckby*, as told in his own words. A war correspondent for more than two decades, he led a double life, appearing to be a regular family man while at home in London, but immersed in sadism and depravity while on overseas assignments. He didn't just document the violence - he became directly involved in it.

 

This book is not just a chronicle of Alan Buckby's life and work. It is also a chronicle of his efforts to understand his own fascination with torture, sexual violence and murder, and his wife's attempt to understand how the man she knew as her husband and the father to her children could have been involved on such horrors.

 

Buckby’s memoir lurches backward and forward through time, not only providing a tour of the mind of a seriously disturbed individual, but touching on everything from the Margaret Thatcher years, to the Arab Spring and the current war in Syria and Iraq. Buckby died in 2014 and it was then that his wife Kay discovered his secrets in his diaries and notebooks. Working with a ghost writer, she reconstructed her husband’s real life. This book is the result.

 

* Author’s name has been changed to protect the identity of his family.