Lagos: Supernatural City (Hardback)

This is a frantic, mystical journey through Africa's biggest metropolis: Lagos. Going beyond the popular images of mad traffic or crowded slums, we learn of the incredible feats Lagosians pull off to survive their broken-down city, and the secret enabling them to cope with the chaos and precarity of Nigeria's most populous centre: spirituality. A female street fighter in a male-dominated mafia extortion business. Two powerful chiefs locked in a deadly feud over billion-dollar real estate. An oil tycoon who gambles her fortune on televangelists' prophecies. A rubbish scavenger dreaming of a reggae career. A fisherman's son trying to save Makoko, the 'floating slum', from demolition. A priestess to a river goddess selling sand to feed Lagos's construction boom. Belief in unseen forces unites these figures, as does their commitment to worshipping them--at shrines, in mosques and in churches. In this extraordinary city, Tim Cocks uncovers something universal about human nature in the face of danger and high uncertainty: our tendency to place faith in a realm beyond.