Rift In Search of Eden

An ambitious book that examines the African Rift Valley and Great Lakes region from deep time to today. Mixing travel, environmentalism, nature writing and anthropology, Aminatta Forna will write a deeply humane, broad-thinking book about the interconnectedness of people and the places we inhabit.

Africa's Great Rift Valley stretches from the Red Sea through East Africa to the southern end of Mozambique. In all the area touches seven African countries: Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Uganda, Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania. The wider Great Lakes region encompasses Rwanda and Congo. It is biologically and physiographically Africa's most diverse region, encompassing every conceivable habitat from deserts to snowfields, active volcanoes to deep water abyss, lowland rainforest to acacia savanna. Centred here, the book will give a grand and sophisticated new vision of the African continent, considering what life in Africa has meant and looked like - and eyeing up in particular whether 'progress' is a straight line or whether our beginnings can be more relevant to our current crises and future than we might expect.