"Breaking the Rules" it that rare book which provides a unique insight into some of the events that have shaped our time: the Vietnam War and its aftermath, the ongoing Middle East crisis and China as it evolved from Mao to market economy, all viewed from the perspective of the UN refugee agency and its wacky workings. In 1973 the author meets the then UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan who asks him to becomes his liaison officer to the South Vietnam Liberation Front, the Viet Cong. After the fall of Saigon in 1975 he becomes the UNHCR Representative in Hanoi where he spends two years sparring with the wily Vietnamese and their unreconstructed communist system. From Hanoi he proceeds to New York for one year with the Carnegie Endowment. There he observes with awe the full spectrum of the American political system from the remnants of the peace movement to the Vietnam war nostalgics observing Vietnam in order to see what they want to see rather than what there is to see. He then returns to UNHCR for a 20 yearlong career as an actor in the tragedies and comedies of an agency that promises to save people but is staffed with human beings whose primary concern, more often than not, is their paycheck and their promotion. The substance of the author's narrative is not only exceptional. It is also funny, perceptive, wary, provocative, entertaining and critical, sparing no one, including himself
About the Author: Alexander was born in Naples, Italy, in 1936. His mother came from Prague and was successively a biologist, a classical pianist, a choreographer and a psychologist. His father, a publisher and bibliophile came from an old Neapolitan family . His parents met when his mother was invited to organize a series of classical Greek choreographies that were performed in the newly discovered Roman amphitheater in Pompeii in the early 1930's. In 1943, after the Germans invaded Italy, Alexander and his mother fled to Switzerland as refugees. Over the following years Alexander acquired a degree in literature and Philosophy from the Sorbonne in Paris as well as a MA and a PhD from the Graduate Institute for International Studies in Geneva. From 1965 to 1975 he worked as a lecturer, consultant and journalist covering China and the Vietnam War for a number of Swiss newspapers. In 1975 he joined the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees where, over the following 20 years, he served in Vientiane, Hanoi, Geneva, Beirut and Bangkok. Alexander Casella lives in Geneva, Switzerland with two cats and his American-born wife and currently writes for Asia Times.