As a journalist Keane has covered conflict and brutality across the world for more than 30 years. Driven by an irresistible compulsion to be where the night is darkest, he made a name for reporting with humanity and empathy from places where death and serious injury were not abstractions, and tragedy often just a moment’s bad luck away. But all this time he struggled not to be overwhelmed by another story, his acute ‘complex post-traumatic stress disorder’, a condition arising from exposure to multiple instances of trauma experienced over a long period. This condition has caused him to suffer a number of mental breakdowns and hospitalisations. Despite this, he has gone back to the wars again and again. Why? Here, Keane interrogates what it is that draws him to the wars, what keeps him there and offers a reckoning of the damage done.