Product Description

In March 2004 a group led by Nick Du Toit and former SAS member Simon Mann tried to overthrow the tyrannical Obiang Nguema, president of Equatorial Guinea. They were working for investors, allegedly including Mark Thatcher and “J.H. Archer”, who wanted to seize control of Africa’s third largest oil producer. Roberts tells how the coup was set up and abandoned at the last minute, and how the plotters were seized and subsequently tortured. The new material includes an account of Mann’s illegal abduction from prison in 2008; his dramatic trial, in which he accuses named individuals, including Thatcher, of being deeply involved in the plot; Thatcher’s fears of “extraordinary rendition” to Equatorial Guinea; and Eli Calil’s revelatory admission that he supported forced regime change in Equatorial Guinea.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #97128 in Books
• Published on: 2009-01-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Review
"'Riveting and superbly researched... a brilliant, mordant, blackly comic read.' Sunday Times 'Adam Roberts shows, with merciless precision, how the dogs of war panicked where they should have been cool, and screwed up where they should have been clinically efficient.' Observer 'Well-researched and wonderfully gripping.' Financial Times 'An irresistibly lurid tale... he lifts the curtain to the backrooms of power in postcolonial Africa' Publishers Weekly 'Impressively researched and briskly narrated.' The Daily Mail"

Sunday Times
‘riveting and superbly researched…a brilliant, mordant, blackly comic read.’

About the Author
A former Southern Africa correspondent for The Economist, Adam Roberts has contributed to the Times Literary Supplement and political journals in Africa. He is a regular contributor to the Guardian and currently works for The Economist in London.

Customer Reviews

A great boys story...
This is a relatively good account of the "toffs 'n' mercenaries" in Africa story of a few years ago. It's also a pretty much a straight telling of the characters, history, lead up and aftermath of the events with a tiny splodge of socio-economic facts and figures and a brief insight into the general corruption that exists in Africa (more often than not as a direct result of Big Business).

Although some of the writing occasionally feels strangled in its attempts to connect the various disparate elements and in trying to create an "exciting" feel with regards to the details of the coup (Roberts is certainly no thriller writer....he works for The Economist)...this is a fascinating insight into a world in which you would have thought no longer existed.

Stranger than any fiction
A very well written account of an astonishing story: this is what happens when bored ex-soldiers drink too much and start believing their own fantasies. The sheer amaturishness and bungling of these characters is breath-taking. Roberts writes well and the book is also well organised - neither too long nor too short. The one caveat is that there are no pictures and, despite the best descriptive efforts by Roberts, I cannot understand why pictures of the real people and real places he talks about are not included. I hope this is not an example of the publishers being too cheap.

The Roberts Coup
Adam Roberts has commited a thrilling account of the exploits of soldiers of misfortune in Africa. The book includes some amazing revalations about people who you'd might not think of as coup-plotters. I found the book to be a a real page turner, just the kind of book you'd wanna pick up at the airport to pass a four hour flight or so.