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To understand Africa, one must understand Nigeria, and few Americans understand Nigeria better than Karl Maier. This House Has Fallen is a bracing and disturbing report on the state of Africa's most populous, potentially richest, and most dangerously dysfunctional nation.Each year, with depressing consistency, Nigeria is declared the most corrupt state in the entire world. Though Nigeria is a nation into which billions of dollars of oil money flow, its per capita income has fallen dramatically in the past two decades. Military coup follows military coup. A bellwether for Africa, it is a country of rising ethnic tensions and falling standards of living, very possibly on the verge of utter collapse — a collapse that could dramatically overshadow even the massacres in Rwanda.A brilliant piece of reportage and travel writing, This House Has Fallenlooks into the Nigerian abyss and comes away with insight, profound conclusions, and even some hope. Updated with a new preface by the author.

Karl Maier has been the Africa correspondent for London’s Independent newspaper and a contributor to The Economist and the Washington Post. His previous two books on Africa, Angola: Promises and Lies and Into the House of the Ancestors, received glowing reviews internationally. He lives in London.