A behind-the-scenes look at the life of a junior diplomat.
Moscow in the Cold War. Karachi during the Indo-Pakistan War of 1971. Buenos Aires at the time of Perón's death. Three critical chapters of twentieth-century history - and as a young diplomat, Tony Rossiter had a box seat.
In Moscow in 1968, Western diplomats were kept under surveillance, their flats were bugged, and they were harassed by the KGB. From Moscow, Tony went to Karachi, a quasi-colonial world of servants and snobby expatriates. When war broke out, his young family huddled together as bomb blasts shook the walls. After a week of air attacks, women and children were belatedly evacuated. Transferred to Buenos Aires, it was out of the frying pan into the fire. Tony arrived, shortly after Perón's reinstatement as president, as the Montoneros urban guerrillas were stepping up terrorist attacks against Western targets.
Unlike the memoirs of most former diplomats, this book is not about high-level bureaucracy. Instead, it provides rare insight into the day-to-day life of a young man working at the coalface. Rossiter's background was unusual for his era, and this vivid and evocative memoir offers a unique glimpse behind the curtain of international diplomacy.