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Oil On Water: A Novel (2011)

by Helon Habila(Favorite Author)

3.61 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0393339645 (ISBN13: 9780393339642)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

W. W. Norton & Company

review 1: An important subject (corruption in the Nigerian oil industry), treated somewhat unevenly. The story follows a naive journalist discovering the conditions in Nigeria's polluted backwaters until he ends up sheltering in a tenuous island community that worships ecological balance. The most compelling sections involve a hunt for the Conradian evildoers in the deepest interior,but the depictions of the city, the island, and the nefarious English businessmen are underdeveloped. Habila's prose is richer and deeper in some of his other novels. Would love to see him come back to this subject again.
review 2: My fascination with all-things-African continues after my trip there with People to People in 2000. (I was with English teachers from North and South America vi... moresiting with English teachers in South Africa as they were still inviting students to come back to the newly restructured schools a full six years after the fall of apartheid.)Oil on Water is a devastating look at what is happening in Nigeria as the oil boom decimates individual people, the indigenous culture, the environment and the many different communities. The book is well written and comprehensive, but the author struggled with the ending (they are hard to write!), but the book is well worth reading to know how our appetite for oil impacts the rest of the world. less

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