Oil on Water

‘A lean, evocative novel - part thriller, part meditation on the deadly cost of the region’s oil politics. A classic coming-of-age narrative’

Daily Mail

From the desks of Nigeria’s newsrooms, two journalists are recruited to find the kidnapped wife of a British oil engineer. Zaq, an infamous and ageing hack, knows the score, but Rufus, who is keen, young and eager to get noticed, has no idea what he’s let himself in for. Journeying into the oil-rich regions of the Niger Delta, where militants and corporations rule, and life is cheap but death even cheaper, Rufus uncovers a world far darker and more corrupt than he ever imagined.

‘Habila’s writing has that combination of elegance and rattling-good-yarn that we associate with Conrad and Graham Greene. Terrific’

The Times

‘Masterly. Draws on the tradition of the classic detective novel but also operates on a deeper, metaphorical and philosophical level. Habila has a filmic ability to etch scenes on the imagination’

Independent

‘A strange, almost hallucinatory plunge into the dangerous world of the Niger Delta’

Metro

‘Lays bare the real-life tragedy of the Niger delta, in which petrodollars warp human relationships as surely as leaking crude poisons birds and fish … powerful, accomplished’

Observer

‘Reads like a post-colonial riff on Conrad’s Heart of Darkness’

Financial Times