This House Has Fallen: Nigeria in Crisis

by KarlMaier (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2002

  $31.24

  To understand Africa, one must understand Nigeria, and few Americans understand Nigeria better than Karl Maier. This House Has Fallen is a bracing and disturbing report on the state of Africa's most populous, potentially richest, and most dangerously dysfunctional nation.Each year, with depressing consistency, Nigeria is declared the most corrupt state in the entire world. Though Nigeria is a nation into which billions of dollars of oil money flow, its per capita income has fallen dramatically in the past two decades. Military coup follows military coup. A bellwether for Africa, it is a country of rising ethnic tensions and falling standards of living, very possibly on the verge of utter collapse , a collapse that could dramatically overshadow even the massacres in Rwanda.A brilliant piece of reportage and travel writing, This House Has Fallen looks into the Nigerian abyss and comes away with insight, profound conclusions, and even some hope. Updated with a new preface by the author.

• Used

  Paperback
  2002

  $3.26

  'This is an example of a country that has fallen down; it has collapsed. This house has fallen.' Chinua Achebe Nigeria is one of the most complex and fascinating countries in the world. It is staggeringly diverse, its population (twice that ofBritain's) is split into some 300 different ethnic groups and its geography ranges from the dense tropical jungles of the south to the arid Sahel of the north. One in six of all Africans live in Nigeria. THIS HOUSE HAS FALLEN is both a gripping account of the contemporary crisis in a country seemingly always on the edge of a nervous breakdown and an evocation of the reality of day to day life under impossible circumstances.