Tahir Shah
…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
From the Publisher
"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
Fox News Channel
"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)
Outside
“[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.”
The Boston Globe
“Morrison’s determined travelogue-cum-political reportage . . . excels in bringing the place, politics and history of this fragile region alive.”--(Ethan Gilsdorf)
The Wall Street Journal
“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 Daily Beast
“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.”
SEPTEMBER 2010 - AudioFile
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
Kirkus Reviews
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
