Charlie Johnson in the Flames

At the time of publication, author Michael Ignatieff was 56 years old and the director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University.^[1] He had previously written numerous non-fiction books, including Empire Lite: Nation-Building in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan and The Lesser Evil - Political Ethics in an Age of Terror (for the Gifford Lectures) which were both published in 2003 along with Charlie Johnson in the Flames. Ignatieff had written two previous novels, Asya in 1991 and Scar Tissue in 1993, which was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize.^[2]

American reporter Charlie Johnson and his Polish cameraman Jacek investigate violence taking place in Kosovo. While in Serb-occupied territory, where there has been significant guerilla fighting, they hide in a house belonging to a Muslim family. They witness a Serb patrol unit destroy a house and light a fleeing woman on fire. A horrified Charlie attempts to assist the woman but she dies at an American field hospital. The event haunts Charlie, even after he returns to his family in England. In an attempt to understand how someone could justify such actions, Charlie tracks down the officer responsible to ask him why he did what he did.

The book uses parallels and symbols to portray Charlie as a martyr who sacrifices in order to be in a position to communicate to the world the events that are occurring in war zones. Bronwyn Drainie links the fire imagery to "iconographic figures like St. Peter in Chains, the Madonna in Glory, or Susanna Among the Elders".^[3] Drainie also notes that "the novel is full of the vocabulary of purification and redemption".^[3] An article in the journal English Studies compared the characterizations of war correspondents in Ignatieff's Charlie Johnson in the Flames and Pat Barker's Double Vision, both of whom report on violence to "image-dominated cultures" and deal with debates regarding intervention.^[4] Likewise, an article in the New York Times Book Review compared fictional portrayals war correspondents in Alan Cowell's A Walking Guide and Gil Courtemanche's A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali with Ignatieff's Charlie Johnson.^[5] While Ignatieff does address the debate on intervention on foreign affairs, and its moral implication, he was quoted as saying that he was not trying to make a point, "In fiction, there is no message. The book is about Charlie and what happens to him. It's driven by the plot, not by any ideas that I might have."^[1]