Alek From the Streets of the Sudan to the Runways of Milan and New York

Since the day she was scouted by a modeling agent while shopping at a London street fair when she was just nineteen, Alek Wek's life has been nothing short of a fantasy. When she's not the featured model in print campaigns for hip companies, or gracing the cover of "Elle," she is working the runways of Paris, New York, and Milan to model for the world's leading designers, including Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel. But nothing in her early years prepared her for the life of a model. Born in Wau, in the southern Sudan, Alek knew only a few years of peace with her family before they were caught up in a ruthless civil war that pitted outlaw militias, the Muslim-dominated government, and southern rebels against each other in a brutal conflict that killed nearly two million people. Here is her daring story of fleeing the war on foot and her escape to London, where her rise from young model to supermodel was all the more notable because of Alek's non-European looks. A probe into the Sudanese conflict and an inside look into the life of a most unique supermodel, "Alek" is a book that will inspire as well as inform.Wek, Alek is the author of 'Alek From the Streets of the Sudan to the Runways of Milan and New York', published 2007 under ISBN 9780061243318 and ISBN 0061243310.