Francesca Borri

Francesca Borri, born in Italy, 1980, is a Middle East based war reporter and a pupil of late jurist Antonio Cassese. She covered the battle for Aleppo in the Middle East and for the Guardian about the rise of the Islamic State. In 2016 she publishes Syrian Dust and is the speaker of the Annual Address of the Peace Institute of Oslo. The following year, it becomes a book, Destination Paradise. In 2018, she meets Hamas new leader Yahya Sinwar, who has never spoken before to Western media. She travels from Greece to Sweden with NYT photographer Sergey Ponomarev in search of the Syrians they met in 2015 – the year of Europe’s refugee crisis. The account of both journeys is a co-authored book, Exodus. So far, Francesca’s work has been translated into 24 languages. In March 2020, Francesca arrives at Nembro, Italy’s Covid-19 hotspot, and for over two months she is the only writer on the ground. After wrapping up her investigation of what is going wrong with Italy’s response, she sets off on a long Covid-19 journey across worst-hit countries, in four continents. She is currently in Kabul.