All the Colors of Africa. The History, Politics, and Life of the Continent

Geographer and traveler Semyon Pavlyuk has visited most of the 54 countries in Africa over nearly 20 years of field research and has written a book that combines a scientific approach with sincere love, and measured analysis with vivid travel notes. Based on dialectics (ancient and modern Africa, rich and poor, progressive and backward, united and diverse), the book is a deep, immersive exploration of a continent often portrayed in the media merely as a focal point of all possible woes. In "All the Colors of Africa," there is no colonial optics, but there is room for the wealth of the medieval empire of Mansa Musa, the struggle for freedom, military dictatorships, and encounters with buffalo on narrow paths. There are also lessons that the rest of the world, including post-Soviet states, can learn from the experiences of African countries.