National Book Award Finalist * New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

“A bravura display of satire . . . Dooling evokes the humane checks and balances of a deep world: the logic, you might say, of its magic.”– Richard Eder, L.A. Times.

“The book is absolutely astonishing; I am a Richard Dooling fan for life.”–Phillip M. Margolin, author of Gone, But Not Forgotten and After Dark.

When Peace Corps volunteer Michael Killigan vanishes in West Africa, two men go looking for him. His father Randall, a bankruptcy lawyer, is the warlord of his world — a shark in a fishbowl who exercises power with mad, relentless, hilarious glee. His best friend Boone Westfall, an American innocent abroad, journeys into the African bush armed with nothing but a passport and the almighty dollar.

Both men find far more than they bargained for.

Witches and witch-finders, bush devils, shape-shifters, village chiefs, judges and attorneys, and medicine men from two continents populate this original, ferociously funny novel — one that makes litigation, modern medicine, and the insurance business look indistinguishable from primitive magic.

White Man’s Grave Background Books:

Author’s note: I spent seven months in Sierra Leone in the early 1980s and thoroughly researched everything I’d heard about over there. Unfortunately the books I used are found only in libraries.

• The Mende Of Sierra Leone, By Kenneth Little;
• Mende Religion, By Anthony Gittins;
• The Springs Of Mende Conduct and Belief, By Harris Sawyerr.