First published 2014
Roland Nair carries a U.S. passport but calls himself Scandinavian. After a decade away, he flies back to Freetown, Sierra Leone, where he once profited from civil war alongside Michael Adriko. Adriko claims military service with forces from Ghana to Kuwait to American Special Forces. Now thirty-six and likely broke, he still chases dubious get-rich schemes with the same fervor as before. Adriko says he wants Nair to meet his fiancée Davidia, a Colorado graduate student, but Nair suspects money drives the real agenda. The trio travels toward the Uganda-Congo border to visit Adriko's family. Each traveler conceals crucial information from the others. Their passage through a region that progress forgot strips away pretenses and exposes harsh truths about who they really are.
Genres: fiction, african-literature, adventure, contemporary
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Freetown, Sierra Leone, Uganda-Congo Border
Period: Contemporary
228 pages · Hardcover · Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Content warnings: violence