Fixers

How can a reporter from London or Lyon write a story about Kabul or Kyiv without knowing the city, the language, or the people? The answer is Fixers-local guerilla journalists who provide foreign reporters with everything from hotels to vegan meals, drivers to interviewees, protagonists to entire storylines. Many media companies don’t offer fixers any contracts, insurance, or bylines, while many fixers put up with it because the story just needs to be told. Fixers is the very first book in which they tell their own tales of war and occupation, oppression and exploitation, from France to Afghanistan, from Ukraine to Iran.

Author Biography

MORTAZA BEHBOUDI is a Franco-Afghan journalist and filmmaker. He is the only journalist to report from Moria, Greece-the largest refugee camp in the EU-during Covid, and the only European journalist to report from Iran on the 2022 Mahsa Amini protests. His reports on Afghanistan were recognized with a Bayeux Award for War Correspondents in 2022 as well as over nine months of incarceration by the Taliban in 2023. OKSANA LEUTA is a Ukrainian fixer who worked as a high school teacher and a techno club manager before Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022. Ever since, she has been guiding foreign journalists through checkpoints, frontlines, and shattered cities, helping them tell the stories of her country while living them herself. She hates writing and, prior to this book, had never written anything longer than a social media post. EVRIM EMIR-SAYERS is a scholar of philosophy who researches, teaches, writes, edits, and translates out of Paris, France.DAVID SELIM SAYERS is a scholar of Ottoman and Turkish Studies with a focus on history and literature.