Fiction: Doing Dangerously Well by Carole Enahoro

Broadcaster and art historian Carole Enahoro's debut is darkly, wickedly funny and deeply thought-provoking. In that regard -- in many regards -- it is a perfect book.

In Doing Dangerously Well (Random House Canada) a dam collapses in Nigeria and kills thousands of villagers. The tragedy sets the stage for a different kind of flood as all sorts of people put out a hand to try and collect on the disaster. The Minister of Natural Resources makes a run at the presidency while environmentalists use the disaster for their own green ends. “Loss can always be transformed into profit for those able to envision reconstruction” Enahoro writes early in Doing Dangerously Well. “Indeed, the greater the calamity, the more seductive the prospects.”

Enahoro grew up in Nigeria, Britain and Canada. At present, she is working on a PhD at University College London, researching satire and Nigerian urbanism.