Oil On Water

This is a powerful novel that is both creepy and engaging

Bookseller

In a beautiful, almost cinematic style, Habila moves back and forth in time to tell a story swathed in the cynicism of modern global development and the mysteries of human longing

Booklist

Habila is a master at evoking the plight of characters who ask for little, and end up with even less . . . this is a book you can't put down

Boston Globe

Habila's writing has that combination of elegance and rattling-good-yarn that we associate with Conrad and Graham Greene . . . Terrific

The Times

Powerful, accomplished . . . Oil on Water lays bare the real-life tragedy of the Niger delta, in which petrodollars warp human relationships as surely as leaking crude poisons birds and fish

Observer

A lean, evocative novel - part thriller, part meditation on the deadly cost of the region's under-reported oil politics . . . a classic coming-of-age narrative

Daily Mail

Compassionate, emotive, masterly . . . draws on the tradition of the classic detective novel but also operates on a deeper, metaphorical and philosophical level

Independent