The Black Nile: One Man's Amazing Journey Through Peace and War on the World's Longest River
Investigative journalist Dan Morrison hired a boat builder, summoned a childhood buddy, and set out paddling from Jinja, Uganda, down the White Nile toward Cairo. Four thousand miles, two companions, and several other means of local conveyance later, he emerged on the Mediterranean. The story Morrison tells of this spectacular-and spectacularly harrowing-journey is a mash-up of narrative travel writing, investigative reportage, and current history, resulting in a thoughtful, funny, and...
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A spectacular modern-day adventure along the Nile River from Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean Sea With news of tenuous peace in Sudan, foreign correspondent Dan Morrison bought a plank-board boat, summoned a childhood friend who'd never been off American soil and set out from Uganda, paddling the White Nile on a quest to reach Cairo-a trip that tyranny and war had made impossible for decades. Morrison's chronicle is a mashup of travel narrative and reportage, packed with flights into the frightful and the absurd. Through river mud that engulfs him and burning marshlands that darken the sky, he tracks the snarl of commonalities and conflicts that bleed across the Nile valley, bringing to life the waters that connect the hardscrabble fishing villages of Lake Victoria to the floating Cairo nightclubs where headscarved mothers are entertained by gyrating male dancers. In between are places and lives invisible to cable news and opinion blogs: a hidden oil war that has erased entire towns, secret dams that will flood still more and contested borderlands where acts of compassion and ingenuity defy appalling hardship and waste of life. As Morrison dodges every imaginable hazard, from militia gunfire to squalls of sand, his mishaps unfold in strange harmony with the breathtaking range of individuals he meets along the way. Relaying the voices of Sudanese freedom fighters and escaped Ugandan sex slaves, desert tribesmen and Egyptian tomb raiders, The Black Nile culminates in a visceral understanding of one of the world's most elusive hotspots, where millions strive to claw their way from war and poverty to something better-if only they could agree what that something is, whom to share it with, and how to get there. With the propulsive force of a thriller, The Black Nile is rife with humor, humanity and fervid insight-an unparalleled portrait of a complex territory in profound transition. The Washington Post - Tahir Shah …packed with narrow scrapes, humor and brazen feats of sheer adventure, all set against a brilliantly described backdrop. Reading it, I found myself slipping into the world of a good Rider Haggard novel because, after all, Africa is the continent par excellence of rip-roaring adventure…The Black Nile, which will resonate with old Africa hands the world over, deserves praise for the way it considers the ordinary on a continent so often forgotten by the world at large.
Slate: “Payback in Kampala: Why did a band of Somali Islamists bomb World Cup viewing parties in Uganda?” by Dan Morrison (7/12/10) slate.com/id/2260235/
\ The Daily Beast“Beautifully written. . . . A masterful narrative of investigative reportage, travel writing, and contemporary history. . . . The Black Nile is all at once thrilling, sad, and—most of all—thoughtful.”\ \ \ \ \ The Wall Street Journal“This is hard-core African travel . . . [With] Mr. Morrison's peppery anecdotes, his refreshing honesty and his ability to show how Africans view their difficulties . . . the book gives us a compelling portrait of life along the Nile—from lonely fishing communities on Lake Victoria to the cacophonous collisions of Cairo."--(Hugh Pope)\ \ \ The Boston Globe“Morrison’s determined travelogue-cum-political reportage . . . excels in bringing the place, politics and history of this fragile region alive.”--(Ethan Gilsdorf)\ \ \ \ \ Outside“[Morrison] avoids the evangelical zeal and naïve prescriptions other Africa books fall victim to . . . [while] the more adventuresome portions of The Black Nile keep it from reading like a textbook . . . [as] Morrison teeters dangerously close to gunfights, disease, and run-ins with the authorities while relying on former rebels, proto-entrepreneurs, and crooked bureaucrats to get him through.”\ \ \ \ \ Fox News Channel"The only thing more vivid would be traveling the river yourself. Then again, you may be a little more skittish about contested borders, rampaging militias and tiny plank-board boats than Dan Morrison is. The Black Nile is eye-opening, breath-taking, heart-pounding and, frankly, all the adventure I’m up for now.” --(Ellis Henican)\ \ \ \ \ Kirkus ReviewsAn American journalist's intrepid adventure on the legendary Nile. Tired of piecemeal journalism work from a "fast-shrinking roster of newspapers and magazines," Morrison empowered himself by taking a perilous 4,000-mile journey from Lake Victoria to Rosetta, Egypt, by various means of transportation. The trip was broken up over the course of six months because of visa restrictions between warring north and south Sudan. At first the author was to be accompanied by his best friend from North Carolina, Schon, who joined him in Kampala, Uganda, and helped secure the building of their paddle boat. They finally got going from Jinja after weeks of idleness. By the time they reached Juba, Schon was out of vacation time and had to return home. Morrison resumed his travels alone, jumping from one political hotspot to another thanks to the kindness of strangers, such as a motley assortment of Western aid workers and good Samaritans on a humanitarian barge, where he learned about the ongoing tribal travails between the cattle-herding Nuer and Dinka peoples. Through the swamps of the Sudd he reached oil-rich Malakal, riven by gunmen and malarial microbes, but he was confounded by visa restrictions and flew back to Cairo. Months later, finding himself again marooned in rainy Malakal, "without luck and without connection," he cobbled together enough transports to reach Kosti and then Khartoum, where the White Nile merges magnificently with the Blue Nile. The trip to the engineering marvel of the Aswan High Dam forms the narrative climax, but the last stint into upper Egypt is rather skimpy. An unorthodox travelogue-uneven in places but packed with illuminating, gritty detail. Local author events in New York\ \ \ \ \ Tahir Shah…packed with narrow scrapes, humor and brazen feats of sheer adventure, all set against a brilliantly described backdrop. Reading it, I found myself slipping into the world of a good Rider Haggard novel because, after all, Africa is the continent par excellence of rip-roaring adventure…The Black Nile, which will resonate with old Africa hands the world over, deserves praise for the way it considers the ordinary on a continent so often forgotten by the world at large.\ —The Washington Post\ \ \ \ \ From the Publisher"The Black Nile ...excels in bringing the place, politics and history of this fragile region alive." —-Boston Globe\ \
