Lagos: Supernatural City

Cocks, Tim

ISBN 10: 1787386945 / ISBN 13: 9781787386945

Editore: Hurst, 2022

Codice articolo ABLIING23Mar2912160178219

Riassunto:

This is a frantic, mystical journey through Africa's biggest metropolis: Lagos. Going beyond the popular images of mad traffic or crowded slums, it tells of the incredible feats Lagosians must pull off to survive their broken-down city. It also reveals the secret enabling them to cope with the chaos and precarity of Nigeria's most populous centre: spirituality.

A female street fighter in a male-dominated mafia extortion business. Two powerful chiefs locked in a deadly feud over billion-dollar real estate. An oil tycoon who gambles her fortune on televangelists' prophecies. A rubbish scavenger dreaming of a reggae career. A fisherman's son trying to save Makoko, the "floating slum," from demolition and transformation into luxury waterside flats. A priestess to a river goddess selling sand to feed Lagos's voracious construction boom.

If anything unites these disparate figures, it is their belief in unseen forces, and their commitment to worshipping them--whether at secret shrines to West African gods and ancestors, or in the iron-roofed churches and domed mosques dotting the Lagos skyline. In this extraordinary city, Tim Cocks uncovers something universal about human nature in the face of danger and high uncertainty: our tendency to place faith in a realm beyond.

Informazioni sull?autore:
Tim Cocks is a British-born Reuters journalist of South African parentage. Currently based in Johannesburg, he was formerly Reuters West & Central Africa bureau chief, based in Dakar, following four years in Lagos as Nigeria bureau chief. He holds an MPhil in philosophy from the University of Oxford.

Dati bibliografici

Titolo: Lagos: Supernatural City
Casa editrice: Hurst
Data di pubblicazione: 2022
Legatura: Rilegato
Condizione: New