Mr Bigstuff and the Goddess of Charm: Parties, Cars, Love & Ambition South of the Sahara

by Fiona Ledger (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2001

  $3.50

  `From a sanctimonious Kenneth Kaunda to a wily old freedom fighter in 1980s Sierra Leone, sexy barmen, stuck-up aid workers, French legionnaires and ageing prostitutes, everyone is depicted with enough verve to come alive . . . The equal of anything by Patrick Marnham or Paul Theroux, this is one of the best books on Africa for a long time' Spectator

  `Insightful and timely . . . An editor and producer on the BBC African Service since 1980, Fiona Sax Ledger has her own hugely well-informed take on life on this extraordinary continent. Surreal, observant and touching in equal measure' Scotsman

  `A very amusing book by a writer who really knows Africa . . . Fiona Sax Ledger shows the diversity of a continent whose countries and peoples are too often thrown, all done for, into the same bag' Giles Foden

• Used

  Hardcover
  2000

  $3.25

  This title follows the travels of the author, Fiona Ledger, during her days in the 1980s and 1990s as a correspondent for the World Service in Africa. She describes the people she meets in hairdressers and hotel bedrooms, in shops and community halls. There are funny descriptions of lecherous old men and the pompous foreign press, of a terrible car accident where a broken arm is mistaken for a dislocated one and a charm school in the heart of conservative Zambia. There are pompous colonels; a decrepit lady in Zambia who pines for the old days; an unfaithful lover; andd a paranoid airhostess. The book is also about the limitations of news and current affairs in conveying the world we live in; it's an antitdote to the headlines that dehumanize people, by reducing Africa to acres of big eyed starving babies and invisible tyrants.