Shine Your Eye

Description

West Africa is at a crossroads. Boasting tremendous natural wealth, its inhabitants are among the world’s poorest. Despite apparent multi-party democracy, there have been coups, conflict and corruption since independence. Where can it go from here?

Journeying along the coast and across the Sahel, from Ghana to Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone to Senegal, Adéwálé Májà-Pearce uncovers a restless region on the verge of great change. Visiting fourteen countries—and seeking out the Nigerian diaspora in each—he reflects on these societies’ dramatic shifts since the late 1980s, when he first travelled their roads. Refusing IMF loans and rejecting Western-imposed currencies, West Africa’s diverse, expanding and overwhelmingly young population is staging a quiet revolution for its future, and discarding an aging elite still propped up by European power—from demonstrations against police brutality to the forced withdrawal of French troops.

Speaking with local journalists and dissident scholars, street hawkers and immigration officers, Májà-Pearce brings to life the compelling story of a region at breaking point—as told by West Africans themselves.

Reviews

‘Vivid, passionate and deeply insightful about the past, present and possible futures of a region that has long suffered from both the interference and neglect of the rest of the world, and is busy creating multiple problems of its own.’ — Paddy Docherty, author of Blood and Bronze: The British Empire and the Sack of Benin

‘Peppered with chatty observations from his own travels, and with a merciless eye for hypocrisy and cruelty, Májà-Pearce goes deep into the torturous history that makes this complex region both endlessly fascinating and so hard to pacify.’ — Tim Cocks, author of Lagos: Supernatural City

‘Few nonfiction writers can merge their own life story with West Africa’s and have it all make sense quite like Adéwálé Májà-Pearce, who’s made it his trademark. Simply, a compelling read.’ — Femke van Zeijl, journalist and writer

‘With incisive wit, Adéwálé Májà-Pearce offers a lucid and unsparing account of the tragedies that beset West Africa, from the legacies of slavery and colonialism to the incompetence and corruption of postcolonial states. A must-read book and a model for writing on contemporary Africa.’ — Adom Getachew, author of Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination 

‘A tour of West Africa by a restive writer with no illusions. His account of his overnight stay in a Togolese jail gets to the heart of his aversion to post-colonial African regimes and his empathy with their citizens.’ — Jeremy Harding, Contributing Editor, London Review of Books, and author of Analogue Africa: Notes on the Anti-Colonial Imagination

‘There is a quiet rage in Adéwálé Májà-Pearce’s writing. With dark humour and unflinching social criticism, he tells a personal story that intersects with the collective narrative. In doing so, he takes us to a deeper understanding of West Africa’s broken trajectory.’ — Véronique Tadjo, author of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize–winning In the Company of Men

Author(s)

Born in London, Adéwálé Májà-Pearce grew up in Lagos. The author of The House My Father Built and This Fiction Called Nigeria, he holds an MA from SOAS University of London. Previously an Africa researcher for the Index on Censorship, he has written for The New York Times and Granta.