Grasping Africa: A Tale of Tragedy and Achievement

by Stephen Chan

Africa is huge, internationally vital, potentially rich and powerful yet mired in failure - political, economic, social and even cultural. Yet the story of contemporary Africa is not just one of global tragedy but also of enormous hope for the future. This stimulating and unconventional book on Africa today and its relationship with the West explores the many complex reasons behind Africa's failure to fulfil its potential - it is a continent blighted by colonialism, exploitation and the interference of great powers in the international relations of the region - and offers some genuinely original and well-argued suggestions for ways forward. Critical and objective yet involved and sympathetic, "Grasping Africa" demonstrates Stephen Chan's deep understanding of the history and politics of Africa based on his long experience of the continent in often dangerous circumstances.

200 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Marissa Lemargie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this book after seeing Stephan Chan speak at a conference on Authoritarian Rule in Africa. I was quite impressed with him at the conference, one of the few that put the rest of us in our places and challenged us to think beyond the stereotypes that we sometimes fall into. I really liked the first half of the book, it's very personal and reads like poetry. Africa and Stephan's interaction with it the last 20-something years comes alive. I could barely put it down. But as I got to the end it became a little too "stream of consciousness" for me (the book is in a rather unusual format). Still good, but a little harder to follow unless you have a good handle of the Lord's Resistance Army and other really specific events in Africa.