Alex Perry was TIME magazine's bureau chief in Africa until he left his job, partly out of frustration with the limits of the story he could tell as a foreign correspondent. This book is the result. Taking the Great Rift Valley as his central metaphor, Perry explores the split between a resurgent Africa and a world at odds with its rise, between rich and poor, between Western ideals and Western reality and between African dreams and African achievement. By exploding the myths about the continent, Perry reveals the stunning face of modern Africa, a place where cash is becoming a thing of the past, where African astronomers are unlocking the origin of life and where, twenty-five years after Live Aid, Ethiopia's first yuppies are traders on an electronic food exchange. THE RIFT is a groundbreaking new portrait of this fascinating, bewildering and rapidly changing continent.

Author Biography

Born in the US and educated in Britain, where he read PPE at Oxford University, Alex Perry is an award-winning journalist and expert on Africa, where he was Time Magazine's bureau chief. His numerous awards include honours from the Society of Publishers in Asia, the Foreign Press Association in London and the Overseas Press Club in New York. In 2007, while covering Zimbabwe's implosion, Perry was held in jail for five days before being convicted of being a 'determined and resourceful journalist'.