Cry for Help: 36 Scam Emails from Africa

by Henning Wagenbreth (Illustrator)

The tone is carefully subservient, condescending, solicitous, disdainful. That’s the way the now ubiquitous ‘African Scam Mail’ has descended upon us and that’s the way German illustrator and author Henning Wagenbreth applies his own distinct style and wit to depict them. Using just a few bright colors and an amazing command of typography, A Cry For Help is a series of brilliant vignettes illustrating 36 of Wagenbreth’s favorite scam emails from Africa. Styles utlized include woodblock, linocut prints and computerized images, and all visualize in tragicomic manner just how easily a weapon of globalization (the internet) can be turned against its creators. Henning Wagenbreth is an award-winning illustrator and professor of Visual Communication at the Universität der Künste in Berlin (Berlin Academy of Arts).

Genres: Art

80 pages, Paperback

First published December 5, 2006

About the author

Henning Wagenbreth is as an illustrator, a graphic designer, and a professor of illustration at the University of Arts in Berlin.

Reviews

[Meg · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am not as familiar with the Nigerian e-mail scams as I am with the Nigerian phone relay service scams, but this book gives you all the background you'd want. I appreciated the odd collection, but all 36 e-mails are basically the same. I could have gotten the gist of the topic by just reading the first five e-mails. The art is compelling, but the e-mails aren't enough to keep you hooked. It's not the kind of book I'd ever want to reread (or own), but it's an unusual topic and a fast read, so it might be worth a glance at a bookstore or library.

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a gift from a friend...
An interesting idea...except one doesn't really want to read the book, having read such emails before in one's inbox--little is done here to provide context or reimagine them... they are just presented with illustrations and I don't find the illustrations particularly interesting or wonderful.

[Bivisyani Questibrilia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a simple concept for a book. It's almost like a mini exhibition of scam emails. These people are actually pretty creative, aren't they? Coming up with diverse stories from different African countries, tying themselves to various African leaders and political figures—honestly, brilliant! Such a shame that those skills were used for the demise of others.

This book makes me realise the untapped creativity of Africans. Only now do I realise that, yes, the way they scam is so different from any other parts of the world. Who else in any other country would've thought to use the stories they'd told to drain other people of their wealth? Utterly genius!

It also makes me realise that such emails have since the early 2000s probably gone extinct. I don't think people today would so easily fall for such traps. In fact, they won't even have a chance to, since email services have been much smarter in identifying these scam emails and keep the recipients from receiving them altogether.

Alas, such is the fate of a lost (albeit dangerous) art.

[shaz rasul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well illustrated compliation of scam emails from africa in all the major categories -- relative of deposed authoritarian ruler, displaced zimbabwean, foreign aid project gone wrong, etc. Perhaps a fun book to give as a gift. Clearly only for those with an affinity for the genre.