Product Description

On 7 March 2004, Zimbabwean police impounded a plane, which flew in from South Africa with 64 alleged mercenaries on board. The group, led by Nick Du Toit and former SAS member Simon Mann, were planning a coup in Equatorial Guinea. Within a few days of the failed takeover, Du Toit appeared on television and admitted everything, almost certainly encouraged by torture. Once investigators started to piece together the facts they found that the elaborate plot was funded not by oil tycoons but by celebrity investors. Several names were put forward, including Sir Mark Thatcher and scandal-prone author Jeffrey Archer. In November 2004 Britain's foreign secretary, Jack Straw, admitted that his government knew about the plot three months before it took place. The target of the coup was Obiang Nguema, the president of Equatorial Guinea and one of the last relics of old-fashioned tyranny in Africa. But the plotters were not campaigning for democracy. Equatorial Guinea is Africa's 3rd largest producer of oil, pumping 350,000 barrels per day, and the coup plotters wanted a share of these oil billions. Adam Roberts tells the amazing story of the coup plot, recounting the drama in detail, and explaining the significance of the events of March 2004 and their aftermath. He also uses the narrative to shed light more broadly on Africa's politics and economy, providing a rich understanding of a continent that is still all too poorly known and the great scramble for control of the continent's bountiful resources.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #339253 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-22
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Review
Daily Mail -'Impressively researched and briskly narrated...takes readers into a world where slippery chancers and thuggish ex-special forces type, mostly South African, rub shoulders with spooks and dodgy financiers.' Publishers Weekly - 'The most terrifying thing about this chronicle of a failed coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea is that it's not a Graham Greene novel but a true story. An irresistibly lurid tale...he lifts the curtain to the backrooms of power in postcolonial Africa.' Sunday Times - 'riveting and superbly researched...a brilliant, mordant, blackly comic read.' Observer - '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.'

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

Observer
‘...shows, with merciless precision, how the dogs of war panicked...and screwed up where they should have been clinically efficient.’

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.