Don't Shoot the Clowns
Taking a Circus to the real Iraq

The account of one woman's experience of living with Iraqi people during the Iraq war and the occupation. An intense and engaging story, it combines the reality of a country coping with invasion with the extraordinary story of the travelling circus that brought clowns and laughter to the children.

As a human rights observer Jo Wilding, a young solidarity activist, witnessed and recorded some of the worst atrocities committed against ordinary civilians. And as the occupation started she joined a group of performers to put on circus shows in squatter camps, hospitals, schools and orphanages.

Jo Wilding is a new kind of 'citizen reporter', instinctively recording events and publishing directly online. Her daily accounts have an immediacy and accuracy that bring the scenes sharply into focus.

From the shocking and painful stories of the siege of Falluja to the crowds of mesmerised children given some respite from horror and uncertainty by the clowns, every episode vividly evokes what day to day life in Iraq is really like.

Read an interview with Jo Wilding

"Excellent unembedded reporting."
Mark Thomas

"Jo was the only one of us foreigners in Iraq who I was absolutely sure was doing something useful. She made thousands of children happy."
Naomi Klein

Format: 216 x 138mm, paperback, 30 b&w photographs
Pages: 272

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