THE WONGA COUP Guns, Thugs And A Ruthless Determination To Create Mayhem in an Oil-Rich Corner of Africa ADAM ROBERTS

"[Roberts] moves deftly between the politics of Equatorial Guinea—the tiny West African country he claims to be the most wretched on earth—and the growing restlessness of Mann and his cronies…he draws a convincing picture of wholesale corruption and brutality on the part of the country's ruling class…The Wonga Coup offers an intimate, behind-the-scenes look at precisely how an aristocratic renegade like Mann and his accused fellow plotters and financial supporters…can amass an army to depose an African leader." --New York Times Book Review

"The book -- far more instructive than a thousand foundation-commissioned "good governance" reports -- is an account of a tragic farce that took place a couple of years ago… The Wonga Coup can be read as a case study of the African failure." --Wall Street Journal

"In his well-researched new book, The Wonga Coup Economist correspondent Adam Roberts describes how the purported plotters of ‘assisted regime change' in Equatorial Guinea stood to win control of one of the richest patches of oil and gas in Africa." Slate.com

"The book is filled with meticulous reporting…gets inside the world of African mercenaries, arms suppliers, and intelligence traders." --Seattle Times

"A real-life pulp thriller, sardonic, riveting." --Dallas Morning News

"The achievement of The Wonga Coup is to penetrate the shady world of mercenaries, financiers, and freelance intelligence gatherers in Africa…The author has amassed impressive, and readable detail about the plot, its costs and its personalities." --Financial Times

"As one might infer from the misadventures in Iraq, potential oil riches can inspire some pretty bodacious behavior. In the case of Simon Mann, the disgraced, Eton-bred former officer at the center of Adam Roberts's gripping expose The Wonga Coup, it becomes reason enough to plot a regime change in the tiny West African nation Equatorial Guinea." -Time Out New York