Abstract

Frank Moraes was an editor for the Times of India, and he worked for a number of other newspapers during his career as a journalist. The author of numerous books on a variety of Cold War subjects, including one on Mao’s China and two studies of Nehru, he wrote only this book on Africa, which is an account of his travels there in 1960.3 The continental aspiration of the book is worth lingering on, for it establishes Africa as a very particular kind of ground from the first pages. That ground-the ‘below’ as seen from the airplane window-is ostensibly highly di erentiated, with each chapter mapping the history and contemporary politics of emergent nation-states from Ghana to Rhodesia to Kenya to the Congo. ‘Flying from the Arabian peninsula across the Gulf of Aden to Djibouti in French Somaliland, ' Moraes writes in Chapter 3 (entitled ‘The Lion of Judah’), where we changed into a gaudily painted Convair of the Ethiopian Airlines, the landscape was flat and arid. But over the plateau of Ethiopia the scenery grew more varied-green and untamed, with here and there a dry riverbed and long narrow trails snaking their way over the hillsides. Through the vaporing clouds one saw little sign of habitation and life until suddenly below us, spread on a brilliantly verdant carpet, was Addis Abbaba.4.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationCritical Perspectives on Colonialism
Subtitle of host publicationWriting the Empire from Below
PublisherTaylor and Francis
Pages219-234
Number of pages16
ISBN (Electronic)9781136274619
ISBN (Print)9780415537384
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 1 2013

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Arts and Humanities

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