Shine Your Eye

‘Vivid, passionate and deeply insightful about the past, present and possible futures of a region that has long suffered from both the interference and neglect of the rest of the world, and is busy creating multiple problems of its own.’

-- Paddy Docherty, author of Blood and Bronze: The British Empire and the Sack of Benin

‘Peppered with chatty observations from his own travels, and with a merciless eye for hypocrisy and cruelty, Májà-Pearce goes deep into the torturous history that makes this complex region both endlessly fascinating and so hard to pacify.’

-- Tim Cocks, author of Lagos: Supernatural City

‘Few nonfiction writers can merge their own life story with West Africa’s and have it all make sense quite like Adéwálé Májà-Pearce, who’s made it his trademark. Simply, a compelling read.’

-- Femke van Zeijl, journalist and writer

‘With incisive wit, Adéwálé Májà-Pearce offers a lucid and unsparing account of the tragedies that beset West Africa, from the legacies of slavery and colonialism to the incompetence and corruption of postcolonial states. A must-read book and a model for writing on contemporary Africa.’

-- Adom Getachew, author of Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination

‘A tour of West Africa by a restive writer with no illusions. His account of his overnight stay in a Togolese jail gets to the heart of his aversion to post-colonial African regimes and his empathy with their citizens.’

-- Jeremy Harding, Contributing Editor, London Review of Books, and author of Analogue Africa: Notes on the Anti-Colonial Imagination

‘There is a quiet rage in Adéwálé Májà-Pearce’s writing. With dark humour and unflinching social criticism, he tells a personal story that intersects with the collective narrative. In doing so, he takes us to a deeper understanding of West Africa’s broken trajectory.’

-- Véronique Tadjo, author of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize–winning In the Company of Men