Dimensions
134 x 198 x 22mm
From the author of 'Saddled With Darwin' comes another epic journey through the spiritual heartland of West Africa.
In 1995, Toby Green became friends with El Hadji, a Senegalese photographer who swore that, in the West African hinterland, there were mystics who possessed the secrets of how to become invisible and invulnerable. Four years later, he returns to meet up with his old friend, and test the strengths of these surreal claims for himself.
Exploring the extraordinarily vibrant spiritual world which underlies the surface of West Africa, this book examines the conflict between the traditional and the modern in a region whose culture is a melting pot of local, Islamic and European influences.
From Guinea to Casamance, Toby Green weaves a mystical narrative of lore and tradition as he searches for - and finds - the secret power of invisibility.
After accepting a potion from the local Grys-Grys, Toby Green curiously becomes invulnerable to the stabbings of a knife on his wrist, as the photographic evidence will testify. Or the equally bizarre journey in a taxi following a meeting with another local spiritualist who performed an invisibility charm on the author - it soon became obvious that the taxi driver didn't seem to think he was there at all and addressed only his companion, an unsettling experience reinforced shortly afterwards by the mad and erratic behaviour of his companion's dog towards the author's "spiritual" presence.
Startling, strange and often extremely surreal, Toby Green challenges the "safe", colonial assumptions of the West about this so-called "exotic" region and highlights the disparity between iconic, mercantile Europe and a culture imbued with spiritualism at every level of life and an equally potent belief in the mysterious powers of the mind.
Engaging the reader with themes as diverse as the histories of the slave trade and the kingdoms of West Africa, the invisible men of HG Wells and Ralph Ellison, Plato's simile of the cave and Marco Polo's observations about Zanzibar, the book is by turns mysterious, hilarious, beautiful and troubling.
Confronting the dogmas of magic and modernity, 'Meeting The Invisible Man' confirms Toby Green as an exciting and imaginative travel writer, taking the reader in search of the unbelievable only to find that, after all, it is really quite believable.
