In 2000, with controversy raging over the presence in Sudan of Talisman Energy, Canada's largest independent oil and gas producer, Ottawa decided to open a post in Khartoum. Nicholas Coghlan was recalled from assignment in Colombia to set up and run Canada's first diplomatic post in the largest country in Africa. "In diplomatic circles, you cry when you hear you've been posted to Sudan," says Coghlan. "But you cry even more when you leave." Far in the Waste Sudan weaves together a personal and political account of Coghlan's three-year appointment.

Oil rich and on the divide between Africa and the Middle East, Sudan is one of Africa's most inaccessible countries. Coghlan takes the reader from Khartoum, former home of Carlos the Jackal and Osama bin-Laden, to the Nubian desert to the rebel-controlled swamps and jungle lowlands of Equatoria. He takes us with him to the mountain ranges of Darfur and the forgotten national park of Dinder and on a fifty-year old steel sailing dinghy racing on the Blue Nile.

With new conflicts smouldering in Darfur, Far in the Waste Sudan also explores the moral and ethical dilemmas of delivering aid to a country at war with itself. Coghlan's rare first-hand account of Sudan offers a unique perspective that leaves an indelible impression.