The author and the coup he didn't have to invent
When Guinea-Bissau's President was assassinated, guess which novelist happened to be in the country
By Todd Pitman in Bissau writing in The Independent, Thursday, 5 March 2009
The author Frederick Forsyth, landed in Guinea-Bissau to research his latest thriller just hours before President Joao Bernardo Vieira was assassinated - AP
It could have been a scene out of one of his own thrillers. And when his next novel is published, it may very well be.
The British author Frederick Forsyth flew to Guinea-Bissau this week to research his latest novel, and found real life trumping fiction.
Hours before he touched down in the west African nation, a bomb hidden under a staircase blew apart the armed forces chief. Hours later, the President was shot dead and according to Forsyth, hacked to pieces.
The double assassination of President Joao Bernardo "Nino" Vieira and his military rival, General Batiste Tagme na Waie, shocked the country and clouded this sweaty equatorial capital in the kind of mystery and intrigue often detailed in Forsyth's own fiction about assassins, spies and coups.
His presence here inevitably drew comparisons with his hit novel The Dogs of War, which is about mercenaries trying to stage a coup in a mineral-rich, African backwater.
"I didn't come for a coup d'etat or regime change, but that's what I ran into," Forsyth said over coffee at his hotel. He had been reading in bed when he had heard a boom before dawn on Monday and thought, "that wasn't a car door slamming".
When Guinea-Bissau's President was assassinated, guess which novelist happened to be in the country
By Todd Pitman in Bissau writing in The Independent, Thursday, 5 March 2009
The author Frederick Forsyth, landed in Guinea-Bissau to research his latest thriller just hours before President Joao Bernardo Vieira was assassinated - AP
It could have been a scene out of one of his own thrillers. And when his next novel is published, it may very well be.
The British author Frederick Forsyth flew to Guinea-Bissau this week to research his latest novel, and found real life trumping fiction.
Hours before he touched down in the west African nation, a bomb hidden under a staircase blew apart the armed forces chief. Hours later, the President was shot dead and according to Forsyth, hacked to pieces.
The double assassination of President Joao Bernardo "Nino" Vieira and his military rival, General Batiste Tagme na Waie, shocked the country and clouded this sweaty equatorial capital in the kind of mystery and intrigue often detailed in Forsyth's own fiction about assassins, spies and coups.
His presence here inevitably drew comparisons with his hit novel The Dogs of War, which is about mercenaries trying to stage a coup in a mineral-rich, African backwater.
"I didn't come for a coup d'etat or regime change, but that's what I ran into," Forsyth said over coffee at his hotel. He had been reading in bed when he had heard a boom before dawn on Monday and thought, "that wasn't a car door slamming".
The explosion was blocks away at Mr Vieira's modest downtown villa – the beginning of the President's end. Forsyth later saw troops patrolling the streets but they left him alone.
That night, he had dinner with the Dutch pathologist who had performed the autopsy on Mr Vieira and had spent the morning "trying to put the President back together again".
The full stroy at The Independent online.
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