Black Ghosts

“Shrewd and enthralling . . . The portraits [Noo Saro-Wiwa] presents are enlightening and affecting and a valuable contribution to this still poorly documented migration.”

—Geographical

“Absolutely fascinating . . . the portraits are heart-rending [and] fantastic.”

—BBC Radio 4

“Gutsy and determined, perhaps cut from the same cloth as her subjects, Saro-Wiwa succeeds in getting her story. The reader cannot help but be filled with admiration.”

—Perspective

“Noo Saro-Wiwa's double advantage is to understand personally the mindset of Nigerians as a distinct ethnicity while reporting back to us as an acculturated Westerner . . . she writes with a candid humour that sharply colours the pains and pleasures of homecoming.”

—The Times

“Black Ghosts is a marvellous yet unlikely book, travel with a theme, the revelation of modern China by investigating the underclass of African immigrants—highly trained doctors as well as rascals and rappers. Noo Saro-Wiwa is a brave and resourceful traveller-interrogator—outstanding in the so-called travel writing genre.”

—PAUL THEROUX

“What Noo Saro-Wiwa illuminates in her compelling account of a five-month journey around the land of her birth is how it feels to be a Nigerian today . . . The author's strength is that, although her patience is worn thin by all the scamming, scheming and privation, she never reaches the end of her tether. Instead, her anger dissolves into solidarity with a people she knew hitherto only from dreaded childhood holidays.”

—Financial Times

“A gripping examination of a little-known land: the one Africans occupy in China or, more accurately, in Guangdong. Who knew? Noo Saro-Wiwa has found a fine subject and covers it nimbly. This is a revealing book.”

—SARA WHEELER