Books like Where Vultures Feast

Translated into English by Peter Theroux, this gorgeously written and emotionally stunning novel is told from the perspective of the Bedouin inhabitants during a time when Americans were arriving by the shipload to develop the oilfields they had discovered. The story is both epic and intimate (and, at points, wittily ironic) and opened my eyes to the vast destruction not only of the land and its people but the very core of their culture. Banned in several Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia, this is the first volume of a trilogy (and I recommend them all). 

The frightful violence of the US-UK invasion of Iraq in 2003 was followed by a long, complicated war of stealth by the international oil companies. They sought access to Iraq’s oil reserves, the world’s third-largest, from which they had been ousted by nationalisation in the 1970s. Most western journalists simply could not be bothered to follow the complex interactions between the companies, the oil ministry, and civil society. That made reading this forensic investigation by Greg Muttitt, a committed campaigner for oil industry transparency, all the more satisfying.  

As a non-scientist, I love reading books written by scientists in language that the rest of us can understand. This is one of the best – and it addresses many of the most urgent questions scientists will keep worrying about through the 21st century, about the interaction between oil production and use, the atmosphere, the oceans, and freshwater systems. Catherine Gautier writes in a clear, accessible style. She is well aware that we can not fence off the study of physical phenomena such as climate change and contamination of water sources from the study of society, economics, and politics.  

The team that is ExxonMobil and the US government is like a two-headed dragon, raging across the world, grabbing resources, bullying governments, trampling on people’s livelihoods, and dragging us all closer to disastrous climate change. But there’s something grimly satisfying about reading this account of their evil deeds. It makes you realise that we have found them out. Steve Coll has followed every lead, checked every detail, and pinned down his subjects, in US journalism’s finest traditions. 

Drawing on years of business school teaching and research and leading negotiation trainings in many countries, Shell provides an important guide for people to stand up for their values in business, law, and complex work situations. Real-world stories put flesh on the bones of outlines of both philosophical and political approaches to difficult choices in career and workplace negotiations. This book can assist any negotiator in figuring out what is really important to them (and their clients and organizations) and then how to actualize behaviors that make principled change happen. This book also provides great advice about when to walk away from the negotiation table or a particular task or job because higher values call.

In this riveting account, Agbiboa dispels the myth that corruption is a culturally accepted norm in Nigeria.

He spent months behind the wheel as a minibus conductor in the informal settlements of Lagos, Nigeria, and experienced first-hand the stark realities of the corrupt interactions between drivers, police, and members of the transport workers union.

Nigerians reject, and simultaneously have little choice, but to participate in the petty corruption that arises from the systematic, violent, and exploitative relationship between the state and union on the one hand, and transport operators and passengers on the other.

Agbiboa shows that binary understandings of formality/informality, public/private, and legal/illegal derived from Western thought do not adequately capture the way that petty corruption is embedded in the state and is driven by elite corruption.

This resonated strongly with my research on the informal economy in Tanzania.

Nigeria’s most famous economist and the current Director-General of the World Trade Organization, Okonjo-Iweala is a formidable figure nationally and globally. Her memoir about her time as Finance Minister during the administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo (in office 1999-2007) gives insight into debt relief negotiations and major economic reforms. Those reforms look less transformative in retrospect – at least 40% of Nigerians remain mired in poverty, and Nigeria’s debt has climbed again, including during Okonjo-Iweala’s second stint as Finance Minister – but the memoir remains important for understanding Africa’s largest economy.

What can pain be when you are trying to be free? Who is safe from that when you are trying to be a compassionate person? This book will quell your questions. A girl with scares and scars. Do not be faint of heart on this one. And especially stay away from wells. Really. But also know there is that light that might free us all. 

War Girls is YA sci-fi that takes place in war-torn Nigeria at the end of the 22nd century.

The world as we know it has ended because of runaway climate change and nuclear disaster, and two sisters, Onyii and Ify, live together in a makeshift colony of traumatized former child soldiers. After a devastating raid on their camp, the sisters are separated—each believing the other was killed—only to find themselves on opposing sides of the conflict.

This is a book about the world-shattering horrors of war, but it’s also about colonial violence, about sisterhood and solidarity, and about small moments that forever shape how the protagonists view each other and themselves. It’s also a complex, character-driven story that tenaciously searches for hope in ruins and aftermaths.

This is far more than a colonial era whodunit, a recounting of yet another colonial atrocity – though it is that in spades. Yes, in 1897 the British occupation army reacted to the killing of a a few colonial officials by razing an empire to the ground, careless of its causes and its effects. So much, so commonplace. But what an empire! The Benin artworks the army looted, subsequently dispersed to museums around the globe, were and still are a revelation to those whose notions of African art were to that point limited to masks and fetishes. A mere catalogue of the pieces would be enough to explain why Picasso, among other artists, was captivated by the art of Africa, but Philips has done more than that – he puts the looted artifacts into their context and into their culture. There is nothing didactic or preachy about this book, but… show more.