Genre: Non-fiction, Oil and its impact on African nations.
The book does not deal with the whole of Africa, rather it explores the area south of the Sahara desert. Ghazvinian spent some time between 2003 to 2004 travelling around a bunch of these countries,, talking to the locals, Oil company representatives and employees, government officials and any other parties he could get a hold off.
The book points out that Africa has been gaining interest from the rest of the world due to the substantial reserves that have been discovered there along with the current high price of Oil. The chief theme in this book is how discovery of natural resources in a developing country, rather then causing a increase in the standard of living actually ends up reducing this. There is a term for this called 'Dutch disease'.
So the book does not sermonise on big bad Oil companies, rather he visits a country explores the current state of the country and looks like how Oil has changed the current dynamics of the country viz-a-viz development, politics, social order and foreign relations. The locals he meet do complain about the Oil companies but the author does try to get and present the other side of the story.
All this makes for great reading. Ghazvinian is a fine writer and he captures the unique vibe of each country well, the book holds ones attention and I found myself reading it for long spells. The only section not well written is the start where he make all these pop culture references to 'Fargo' - the movie and place. But that is just a bumpy start and it takes of well from there.
Rating: 5 / 5, Highly recommended.
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