Black Ghosts: A Journey Into the Lives of Africans in China

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Description

China today is both a land of opportunity for Africans blocked from commerce with most of Europe and Northern America, and an intersection of racism and prejudice.

Noo Saro-Wiwa goes in search of China's 'Black Ghosts', African economic migrants in the People's Republic, who live in clustered communities and are involved in the small-commodity trade between the continents. Her fascinating encounters include a cardiac surgeon, a drug dealer, a visa overstayer and men married to Chinese women who speak English with Nigerian accents.

Reviews

'A gripping examination of a little-known land: the one Africans occupy in China or, more accurately, in Guangdong. Who knew Noo Saro-Wiwa has found a fine subject and covers it nimbly. This is a revealing book' - SARA WHEELER

'Black Ghosts is a marvellous yet unlikely book, travel with a theme, the revelation of modern China by investigating the underclass of African immigrants - highly trained doctors as well as rascals and rappers. Noo Saro-Wiwa is a brave and resourceful traveller-interrogator - outstanding in the so-called travel writing genre' - PAUL THEROUX

'Praise for Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria:Her gifts lie in her keen eye for the sights, sounds, souls and insanities of contemporary Nigeria, and in her ability to recreate these. The book is a breathless chronicle of diversity . . . Her encounters are at once full of pathos and brightness' - Independent

'Noo Saro-Wiwa's double advantage is to understand personally the mindset of Nigerians as a distinct ethnicity while reporting back to us as an acculturated Westerner . . . she writes with a candid humour that sharply colours the pains and pleasures of homecoming' - The Times

'What Noo Saro-Wiwa illuminates in her compelling account of a five-month journey around the land of her birth is how it feels to be a Nigerian today . . . The author's strength is that, although her patience is worn thin by all the scamming, scheming and privation, she never reaches the end of her tether. Instead, her anger dissolves into solidarity with a people she knew hitherto only from dreaded childhood holidays' - Financial Times

Author Bio

Noo Saro-Wiwa was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, and raised in England. She attended King's College London and Columbia University in New York. She is an author and journalist currently working for Conde Nast Traveller. Her first book, Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria, was published in 2012 and was named Sunday Times Travel Book of the Year, nominated by the Financial Times as one of the best travel books and included as one of the 10 Best Contemporary Books on Africa by the Guardian. It was also shortlisted for the Authors' Club Dolman Travel Book of the Year Award in 2013 and won the Albatros Travel Literature Prize in 2016. @noosarowiwa | www.noosarowiwa.com