Marielle Debos has written something rare: an academic page-turner about Chad. She intrigues us with basic questions and suggests theoretical answers by telling a down-to-earth story about daily life of Chad's ‘men in arms’. Living by the Gun in Chad is an indispensable book for all African scholars, with or without a special interest in Chad.

Living by the Gun in Chad is an updated translation of her 2013 book Le métier des armes au Tchad (Paris: Karthala). How Chad's small men in arms managed and reflected upon their lives in the first decade of the millennium is the empirical focus in the book. However, material both prior to 2000 and after 2010 has been included. In Part I, she discusses the political developments in Chad from the colonial era to 2004. Based on extensive reading the literature on this under-researched central African country, Debos sets the tone for her own contribution. She asks questions and formulates theories about the coercive, criminal or creative ways of gaining or retaining power in Chad, both by small and ‘Big Men’.

Debos’ study is informed by her travels, observations and discussions of everyday life in Chad from 2004 to 2010, and complemented by her knowledge of films and novels about the country. She uses interviews with powerful people and ordinary citizens. I am particularly fascinated by her use of small and apparently insignificant in-situ situations – what she calls ‘anecdotes’ – as gateways to understand larger and more complicated issues. She is less eager to tell us the reasons that Chad's men take up arms than to explain to us their own logics of taking up arms.

In Part II, she reflects upon the fluid loyalties of Big Men and their supporters. Detailed stories of three Big Men – important politico-military leaders – give the reader empirical examples of the changing political allegiances in Chad. Illustrating the ‘spatial, political and social mobility’ (p. 91) of these three Big Men, all former allies of the regime, Debos convincingly argues that ‘loyalties are the products of unstable social and political identities’ (p. 97), and that material resources, including external support, are crucial to politico-military mobilisation. With peace between Sudan and Chad since January 2010 and the death of Khadafy in Libya in October 2011, the politico-military leaders in Chad lost their prime external supporters and their movements lost their attractiveness to the (small) men in arms who were primarily interested in reaping the material benefits from a political change.

In Part III, Debos first describes the ‘militianised army’ using three analytical dimensions: factionalisation, outsourcing and informalisation. These dimensions structure ways of understanding that ‘recruitment, placement and career advancement obey a logic of patronage’ (p. 130), but it also helps us to comprehend the blurred boundaries between soldier and rebel, between legal and illegal armed activities and the ambiguity of official records when it comes to men in arms.

I do not agree with Debos’ discussions of the weakness or fragility of the state in Chad (pp. 167–71). Debos discusses ‘for whom is the state ‘weak’ or ‘fragile?’’ (p. 167). In my view, this question is not relevant insofar as she does not distinguish the state from the regime. To me, the state consists of its official institutions; the regime determines how the country is governed and power exercised. With that distinction, the Chadian regime is very strong with Deby as an unchallenged democratic dictator at the top. The state itself, however, is close to collapse, delivering fewer and fewer public goods to its citizens. Yet, this is a trivial objection to an excellent piece of scholarship.

It is true that the book is ‘extensively revised and updated’ (p. xi) from the French 2013 edition. However, while some chapters are substantially altered and new information and references included, other chapters are only slightly changed. Chapter 6, ‘Governing the inter-war’ examines the production of inequalities in Chad. Since 2010 the country has been in an inter-war situation, but the empirical examples and the analysis are based on situations prior to 2010. In fact, this last chapter seems to have been the least updated. In the present ‘inter-war period’, civil movements in Chad seem to have taken over from politico-military ones, a point that Debos makes only in passing in the conclusion of her book.

Andrew Brown has done an excellent job in translating the book. However, the tone and feel of the French edition, where Debos takes the reader into the streets of N'Djamena, listening to the jargon and idioms, wordplay and alliterations used by ordinary Chadians in their daily lives, is impossible to render in English. One example may be the elegant title of Chapter 6: ‘L'Etat, c´est du commerce’ subtitled ‘La banalité des modes illegaux et violents d'accumulation’ (p. 196 in the French edition) which reads ‘The untouchables: positions of accumulation and impunity’ (p. 147) in the English edition. In a way, one is privy to more of Chad's daily life in the French edition. Yet, Debos has convincingly explained to us how ‘[i]n Chad, resorting to arms, as a mode of political protest and as a way of life, is routine’ (p. 11).