- Paperback: 320 pages
- Publisher: Profile Books (22 Jun 2006)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1861979347
- ISBN-13: 978-1861979346
- Product Dimensions: 21.4 x 13.4 x 3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
-
Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
413,651 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #71 in Books > History > Countries & Regions > Africa > Central
The Wonga Coup
and over 900,000 other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Amazon.co.uk Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
Product Description
Review
Daily Mail -'Impressively researched and briskly narrated...takes readers into a world where slippery chancers and thuggish ex-special forces type, mostly South African, rub shoulders with spooks and dodgy financiers.' Publishers Weekly - 'The most terrifying thing about this chronicle of a failed coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea is that it's not a Graham Greene novel but a true story. An irresistibly lurid tale...he lifts the curtain to the backrooms of power in postcolonial Africa.' Sunday Times - 'riveting and superbly researched...a brilliant, mordant, blackly comic read.' Observer - 'Adam Roberts shows, with merciless precision, how the dogs of war panicked where they should have been cool, and screwed up where they should have been clinically efficient.'
Sunday Times
‘riveting and superbly researched…a brilliant, mordant, blackly comic read.’
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A great boys story...,
By Hanglemez Pallaccini (Quito, Ecuador) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Wonga Coup: Simon Mann's Plot to Seize Oil Billions in Africa (Paperback)
This is a relatively good account of the "toffs 'n' mercenaries" in Africa story of a few years ago. It's also a pretty much a straight telling of the characters, history, lead up and aftermath of the events with a tiny splodge of socio-economic facts and figures and a brief insight into the general corruption that exists in Africa (more often than not as a direct result of Big Business).
Although some of the writing occasionally feels strangled in its attempts to connect the various disparate elements and in trying to create an "exciting" feel with regards to the details of the coup (Roberts is certainly no thriller writer....he works for The Economist)...this is a fascinating insight into a world in which you would have thought no longer existed.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Stranger than any fiction,
By
This review is from: The Wonga Coup: Simon Mann's Plot to Seize Oil Billions in Africa (Paperback)
A very well written account of an astonishing story: this is what happens when bored ex-soldiers drink too much and start believing their own fantasies. The sheer amaturishness and bungling of these characters is breath-taking. Roberts writes well and the book is also well organised - neither too long nor too short. The one caveat is that there are no pictures and, despite the best descriptive efforts by Roberts, I cannot understand why pictures of the real people and real places he talks about are not included. I hope this is not an example of the publishers being too cheap.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Roberts Coup,
By Happy snapper "Snappy" (Oslo, Norway) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Wonga Coup: Simon Mann's Plot to Seize Oil Billions in Africa (Paperback)
Adam Roberts has commited a thrilling account of the exploits of soldiers of misfortune in Africa. The book includes some amazing revalations about people who you'd might not think of as coup-plotters. I found the book to be a a real page turner, just the kind of book you'd wanna pick up at the airport to pass a four hour flight or so.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews |
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
