The Fate of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence

“In this book [Meredith] provides the most comprehensive description of the causes and consequences of failure in quite a while.”–Boston Globe

“Meredith first traveled up the Nile from Cairo in 1964 as a 21-year-old and claims that, in many ways, his ‘African journey has continued ever since.’ His careful, detailed analysis, his dispassionate but not detached writing, and his evident wit mean that we might all hope his journey continues for much longer.”
—Weekly Standard

“Meredith’s exhaustive study appears just as world leaders are finally trying to come to grips with Africa’s needs. It starkly underlines the urgency of that task.”
—Providence Journal

“The book is elegantly written as well as unerringly accurate, and despite its considerable length it holds the attention of the reader to the end.”–Financial Times

“The Fate of Africa is a comprehensive, wonderfully readable survey of the entire continent’s recent past. . . . Blessed with a strong, clean prose style, the author has delivered a work that offers an education in one volume and, despite its length, the book maintains the pace of an artful novel. . . .”–New York Post

“Though today an independent scholar, Meredith was one of those now-too-rare journalists who knew his beat intimately, having lived on and off (mostly on) in Africa for 40 years, informing a keen and humane mind with all things African. It shows here in the depth and fluid familiarity of his narrative, light on its feet for so wildly complex a picture. Meredith isn’t afraid of venturing an opinion, but what he dines on are basic realities: who did what when, and the consequences. These he spreads before his readers, for them to draw their own, now also informed, conclusions.”
—San Francisco Chronicle