Riding the Demon: On the Road in West Africa
by Peter Chilson
On This Page
Description
In Niger, where access to rail and air travel requires overcoming many obstacles, roads are the nation's lifeline. For a year in the early 1990s, Peter Chilson traveled this desert country by automobile to experience West African road culture. He crisscrossed the same roads again and again with bush taxi driver Issoufou Garba in order to learn one driver's story inside and out. He hitchhiked, riding in cotton trucks, and traveled with other bush taxi drivers, truckers, road engineers, an show more anthropologist, Niger's only licensed woman commercial driver, and a customs officer. The road in Africa, s show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Reviews
Interesting book that was quite obviously written by a teacher. I once took a creative writing class and I felt like I was taking the class again as I read the book. Too many unnecessary metaphors, too redundant, and 178 pages that felt like I should have learned a lot more than I did. Still, interesting little read.
Ratings
Members
- Recently Added By
Author Information
3+ Works 53 Members
Peter Chilson teaches writing and literature at Washington State University. He is also the author of We Never Knew Exactly Where: Dispatches From the Lost Country of Mali and Disturbance-Loving Species: A Novella and Stories, winner of the Bakeless Fiction Prize and the Maria Thomas Fiction Prize. His writings, which have appeared in such show more publications as Foreign Policy, American Scholar, Gulf Coast, High Country News, Audubon, and Ascent, have also been included in two Best American Travel Writing anthologies. show less
Awards and Honors
Awards
Work Relationships
Is abridged in
Classifications
- Genres
- Travel, Nonfiction, Biography & Memoir
- DDC/MDS
- 916.604 — History & geography Geography & travel Geography of and travel in Africa West Africa
- LCC
- DT547.27 .C47 — History of Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania Africa History of Africa West Africa. West Coast French West Africa. French Sahara. West Sahara. Niger History
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 25
- Popularity
- 1,069,754
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (2.70)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 3
