Blue Dahlia, Black Gold: A Journey Into Angola - Hardcover

9780091925611: Blue Dahlia, Black Gold: A Journey Into Angola
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An absorbing, surprising and insightful on-the-ground exploration of one of Africa's most vibrant, excessive, important and quickly-changing countries: Angola. 

Since the end of its crippling 27-year civil war over a decade ago, Angola has changed almost beyond recognition. An oil-fuelled bonanza has brought about massive foreign investment and a fabulously wealthy new elite, making its capital, Luanda, the second most expensive city in the world. Today, fortunes are being made and lost overnight, and rich Angolans are eagerly buying up the assets of its former coloniser, Portugal.
Fascinated by this complex nation, perched at the forefront of a resurgent Africa, writer Daniel Metcalfe travelled to Angola to explore the country for himself. Ebullient and proud, and often unwilling to dwell on its past, Angola has a large army, a hunger for wealth and a need to prove itself on the continent. But as Metcalfe also discovers, it has some of the most grinding poverty in Africa as few Angolans have reaped the rewards of the peace. Nonetheless, amid Angola's brash reality, Metcalfe finds there is a place for a traveller who isn't there to make a quick buck. Crossing the country as ordinary Angolans do, talking to tribal elders, oil workers, mine clearers, street children, he encounters a place of extremes, where cynicism and excess go hand-in-hand with great hospitality and ingenuity. Metcalfe also reveals a colourful history of pirates and slave traders, capuchin monks, syncretic Christian cults and elaborate spirit masks. This is an Angola that symbolises nothing less than a broader turning point between the continents, the repositioning of the rich developed world versus Africa. It is a land that, until now, few outsiders have managed to unlock.

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About the Author:
DANIEL METCALFE was born in London in 1979. After graduating in Classics at Oxford University, he went to live in Iran and Central Asia for a year and a half, following which he wrote Out of Steppe: The Lost Peoples of Central Asia, which was shortlisted for the Banff Mountain Book Award 2009 and the Dolman Travel award 2010. Having travelled extensively in Russia, Asia and the former Soviet Union, he has more recently focused on Portuguese-speaking Africa, inspiring Blue Dahlia, Black Gold: A Journey into Angola. Daniel has written for the Economist, The Guardian, Financial Times, Conde Nast Traveller and the Literary Review. He lives in Málaga, Spain.
Review:
Out of Steppe: '[Metcalfe's] book has many virtues, the greatest of which are courage and a keen eye for detail, plus an ability to convey the essence of a place through the briefest of anecdotes' - Independent

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  • PublisherHutchinson
  • Publication date2013
  • ISBN 10 0091925614
  • ISBN 13 9780091925611
  • BindingHardcover
  • Number of pages368
  • Rating

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9780099525172: Blue Dahlia, Black Gold: A Journey Into Angola

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