Strange and Difficult Times

A devastating critique of global inequities and prejudices exposed by Covid-19, and a vivid first-hand account of Africa's pandemic.

A devastating critique of global inequities and prejudices exposed by Covid-19, and a vivid first-hand account of Africa's pandemic.

In this new collection, Nanjala Nyabola takes stock of a world in crisis. Her incisive yet moving prose unpacks the injustices shaping Covid's starkly different outcomes between countries and communities, and reveals rich societies' shockingly inaccurate view of how her home continent has fared. From the hidden truth of fast action, mutual aid and transnational cooperation in poorer countries to the widespread falsehoods of Western commentary, Nyabola exposes a global society scarred by colonial legacies, lazy narratives and ingrained biases.

These essays are an inventory of the staggering political and social failures of our time, and the myths exposed in Covid's wake. Watching coronavirus spread in Kenya and around the world, Nyabola reflects on a long history of onlookers denying the Global South's agency and successes in times of emergency. Armed with her insider-outsider perspective, she reveals harsh truths about our broken system, and calls powerfully for a sincerely shared post-pandemic world-one where voices like hers can help to write a real global history.

Auteur
Nanjala Nyabola is a writer and political analyst based in Nairobi, Kenya. Her work focuses on structural injustice, the intersection between technology and politics, and migration and human mobility. Her previous collection Travelling While Black, also published by Hurst, was shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year.