Recommendations from our site
“If you’ve lived in a country which isn’t under a dictatorship and move to a country that has been for most of the last decade, you inevitably wonder how it is that these bloodthirsty pantomime figures came to be running the place. Anthills gives the human side of the story. A group of friends have all known each other in their youth. Over time they go off in their different directions. One of them becomes a key aide to the dictator, another becomes a journalist, and the book makes this gradual divergence believable. The dictator doesn’t become a dictator overnight, it’s a step-by-step thing, a bit like the story of the frog in the boiling water. The writing is very lively, the book gives you an understanding of how people who were genuinely admirable liberation-style heroes can turn into despots over time. It’s a much more sophisticated and human account of dictatorship than the one-line, comic-book dismissal you often get.” Read more...
Michael Peel, Foreign Correspondent
“We would think of this book as extremely European and dating back to an older writing tradition in Africa, aimed at people who have an English or British education. It’s a totally wonderful book about a man who engineers a coup in a West African country and what happens to him as a consequence.” Read more...
The best books on Being White in Africa
Justin Cartwright, Novelist
