Oil on Water
Helon Habila
(Author)
21,000+ Reviews
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Description
As Rufus and Zaq navigate polluted rivers flanked by exploded and dormant oil wells, in search of "the white woman," they must contend with the brutality of both government soldiers and militants. Assailed by irresolvable versions of the "truth" about the woman's disappearance, dependent on the kindness of strangers of unknowable loyalties, their journalistic objectivity will prove unsustainable, but other values might yet salvage their human dignity.
Product Details
Price
$15.95
$14.83
Publisher
W. W. Norton & Company
Publish Date
May 16, 2011
Pages
256
Dimensions
5.2 X 7.9 X 0.7 inches | 0.45 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9780393339642
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About the Author
Helon Habila grew up in Nigeria and is the author of three novels, Oil on Water, Measuring Time, and Waiting for an Angel. His fiction, poems, and short stories have won the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Novel (Africa Section), the Virginia Library Foundation's Fiction Award, and the Windham-Campbell Prize. Oil on Water was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Orion Book Award, and the PEN/Open Book Award. He is an associate professor of creative writing at George Mason University.
Reviews
Habila has a filmic ability to etch scenes on the imagination.
Starred Review. A cinematic adventure and a remarkably tense race against the clock set in a haunting world of mangroves, floating villages, and jungle shrines--but it is also a brooding political tragedy in the Graham Greene tradition, one that illustrates the environmental and human costs of resource extraction in corrupt, postcolonial Africa....his mournful vision of the world never eclipses its fragile beauty, or its humanity.
Starred Review. A cinematic adventure and a remarkably tense race against the clock set in a haunting world of mangroves, floating villages, and jungle shrines--but it is also a brooding political tragedy in the Graham Greene tradition, one that illustrates the environmental and human costs of resource extraction in corrupt, postcolonial Africa....his mournful vision of the world never eclipses its fragile beauty, or its humanity.
