The Black Nile: One Man's Amazing Journey Through Peace and War on the World's Longest River

by Dan Morrison

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101190357
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/12/2010
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	888,840
File size:	1 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Dan Morrison has written for the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, San Francisco Chronicle, US News & World Report, and the Christian Science Monitor.

Sean Runnette, a multiple AudioFile Earphones Award winner, has also produced several Audie Award-winning audiobooks. His film and television appearances include Two If by Sea, Copland, Sex and the City, Law & Order, Third Watch, and lots and lots of commercials.

Read an Excerpt

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/

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"The Black Nile ...excels in bringing the place, politics and history of this fragile region alive." —-Boston Globe

Editorial Reviews

…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

Tahir Shah

"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, Wall Street Journal

"Dan Morrison takes the reader on an incredible journey in The Black Nile. Weaving together intense travel writing and history, he has produced a supremely entertaining work, and also an important one."
-David Grann, author of The Lost City of Z and The Devil and Sherlock Holmes

"Morrison's determined travelogue-cum-political reportage...excels in bringing the place, politics and history of this fragile region alive."
-Ethan Gilsdorf, Boston Globe

"Marvelous...A beautifully written tale of an American on a journey to find out who else is out there, what they're thinking, why they do what they do...Every time you think a stretch of Africa is beyond redemption, Morrison strikes up a conversation with another thoughtful pilgrim with a funny, interesting, and often hopeful things to say."
-Tom Robbins, The Village Voice

"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 Daily Beast

"Dan Morrison is too young to have been part of the Gonzo movement. But if Hunter Thompson decided to travel the Nile, from its Ugandan source to Alexandria, encountering gun-toting whackos, crazed religious zealots, scary profiteers and a rich cast of characters in one of the world's most contested regions-well, I think he would have loved to share his trek with Morrison. Fasten your seat belts, readers!"
-Laurie Garrett, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of The Coming Plague

"[The Black Nile] vacillates between racy travel tale and political commentary... [as] Morrison combines wit with deep reporting about the region."
- Laura Speyer, Bloomberg News

"Part travelogue, part crazy adventure tale, part political reportage . . . Morrison's African river journey is a paradoxical mixture of awe-inspiring discoveries, eye-opening human interactions and perilous escapes."
-Chuck Leddy, Minneapolis Star-Tribune

"The Black Nile reveals a traveler of dark humor and insight, equal parts Paul Theroux and Bill Buford."
-Robert Twigger, author of Dr. Ragab's Universal Language and Angry White Pyjamas

"[Morrison] avoids the evangelical zeal and nanve prescriptions other Africa books fall victim to...[while] the more adventuresome portions of The Black Nile keep it from reading like a textbook...[He] 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."
-Outside

"Morrison's account transcends the travel genre to provide authentic and timely information on a complicated part of the world. Highly recommended."
-Melissa Stearns, Library Journal

"An unorthodox travelogue... packed with illuminating, gritty detail."
-Kirkus

"Part On the Road, part Fear and Loathing in Africa, Dan Morrison takes us with him on his journey down the Nile-teaching us, by example, to be explorers of both the world and ourselves."
-Kevin Sites, author of In the Hot Zone

"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, Fox News Channel

From the Publisher

"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)

Fox News Channel

“[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.”

Outside

“Morrison’s determined travelogue-cum-political reportage . . . excels in bringing the place, politics and history of this fragile region alive.”--(Ethan Gilsdorf)

The Boston Globe

“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 Wall Street Journal

“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 Daily Beast

From the start, Sean Runnette sets the tone for Dan Morrison's journal of his trip from Kampala to Cairo. Runnette ably contrasts Morrison's outer confidence with his inner fears of encountering war or crocodiles. He wryly delivers Morrison's descriptions of the busy city of Kampala and the way he and a friend overpacked. It makes for fascinating listening as Morrison reflects on the ironies of war, recounts conflicts with bureaucracy and militia, talks about a stop at a leper colony, and recalls his relatively luxurious wait for a barge. Morrison's words paint a scene well, and Runnette makes the most of them. It's a journey for the ear well worth taking. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

SEPTEMBER 2010 - AudioFile

An 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

Kirkus Reviews