Rift - Softcover

Perry, Alex

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1780226853 ISBN 13: 9781780226859

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2017

Synopsis

A vivid, powerful and controversial look at how the world gets Africa wrong, and how a resurgent Africa is forcing it to think again.

Africa has long been misunderstood--and abused--by outsiders. Correspondent Alex Perry traveled the continent for most of a decade, meeting with entrepreneurs and warlords, professors and cocaine smugglers, presidents and jihadis. Beginning with a devastating investigation into a largely unreported war crime-in 2011, when the US and the major aid agencies helped cause a famine in which 250,000 Somalis died-he finds Africa at a moment of furious self-assertion. To finally win their freedom, Africans must confront three last false prophets-Islamists, dictators and aid workers-who would keep them in their bonds.

Beautifully written, intimately reported, and sure to spark debate, THE RIFT passionately argues that a changing Africa revolutionizes our ideas of it, and of ourselves.

About this title

About the Author

Alex Perry was TIME magazine's bureau chief in Africa until 2013. He frequently returns to Africa, and writes for a number of publications including NEWSWEEK, for which he is a contributing editor. In 2007, after being arrested and jailed in Zimbabwe, he was convicted of being 'a determined and resourceful journalist'. He is the author of FALLING OFF THE EDGE: GLOBALISATION, WORLD PEACE AND OTHER LIES and LIFEBLOOD: HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD, ONE DEAD MOSQUITO AT A TIME, as well as several ebooks on Africa, the Europe and the Middle East. He lives with his family in Hampshire. www.alex-perry.com | @PerryAlexJ

Review

In this stunning book about the past, present, and future of Africa, foreign correspondent Perry (who's written for Time and Newsweek) achieves the seemingly impossible: he writes about the continent from a Western perspective without trying to define Africa to the West, inviting Africans to speak directly to his readers...Perry examines widely discussed issues affecting Africa (including famine, AIDS, humanitarian aid, terrorism, corruption, and Chinese influence), always mindful of the bearing each has on Africa's future. Along the way, Perry bumps into George Clooney in South Sudan, watches Robert Mugabe speak to a crowd in Zimbabwe, and confronts Jacob Zuma in South Africa. The stories he tells, of average Africans trying to carve out a better life, have the vividness of fiction. Perry also exposes the flaws of large-scale humanitarianism in Africa, addressing the inflated claims made for its success and its often counterproductive strategies. Candid, smart, and self-aware, this work is an impressive accomplishment that does more to give Western readers context for Africa's current condition than any book in recent memory. * Publishers Weekly - USA * An epic, rich, endlessly surprising narrative of a fast-changing Africa by one of the few Western journalists to have spent enough time there to understand it. Calls to mind the best African writing of Ryszard Kapuscinski -- Douglas Rogers * author of THE LAST RESORT *

Edition details

• Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1780226853
• ISBN 13: 9781780226859
• Binding: Paperback