Noo Saro-Wiwa was brought up in England, but every summer she was dragged back to visit her father in Nigeria—a country she viewed as an annoying parallel universe where she had to relinquish all her creature comforts and sense of individuality. After her father, activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, was killed there, she didn’t return for several years. Then she decided to come to terms with the country her father given his life for.
Travelling from the exuberant chaos of Lagos to the calm beauty of the eastern mountains; from the eccentricity of a Nigerian dog show to the decrepit kitsch of the Transwonderland Amusement Park, she explores Nigerian Christianity, delves into the country’s history of slavery, examines the corrupting effect of oil, and ponders the huge success of Nollywood.
She finds the country as exasperating as ever and frequently despairs at the corruption and inefficiency she encounters. But she also discovers that it is far more beautiful and varied than she had ever imagined, with its captivating thick tropical rain forest and ancient palaces and monuments—and most engagingly and entertainingly, its unforgettable people.
“The author allows her love-hate relationship with Nigeria to flavour this thoughtful travel journal, lending it irony, wit and frankness.”
About the Author
Noo Saro-Wiwa is an author and freelance journalist.
Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria (Granta, 2012) is her first book. It was selected as BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week in 2012 and was named The Sunday Times Travel Book of the Year, in 2012. Shortlisted for the Author’s Club Dolman Travel Book of the Year Award in 2013, Looking for Transwonderland was also nominated by The Financial Times as one of the best travel books of 2012. The Guardian newspaper included it among its 10 Best Contemporary Books on Africa in 2012.
In 2020, National Geographic included Looking for Transwonderland in its list of notable road trip books. In the same year, Oprah magazine rated it among its top travel books, and it was featured among The Guardian’s 10 of the best road trips to take by audiobook.
The New York Public Library selected Looking For Transwonderland as one of 365 notable books written by female authors, as part of International Women’s Day celebrations in 2017.
Primary Source, a non-profit organisation that works to advance global education in primary and secondary schools, selected Looking for Transwonderland as its annual Global Read title for teachers throughout the United States.
The book has been translated into French and Italian, and in 2016 it won the Albatros Travel Literature Prize in Italy.
Noo was awarded a Miles Morland Scholarship for non-fiction writing in 2015. The following year she contributed stories to the anthology An Unreliable Guide to London (Influx Press, 2016); A Place of Refuge (Unbound, 2016), an anthology of writing on asylum seekers; and La Felicità Degli Uomini Semplici, an Italian-language anthology based around football. Her short non-fiction story about Africans living in China is featured in the Daughters of Africa anthology (Myriad Editions, 2019).
In 2018 Noo was among the judges for the Jhalak Prize for literature.
Condé Nast Traveler Magazine named her one of “The World’s 30 Most Influential Female Travellers” in 2018.
In 2019 Noo was a Rockefeller Foundation Arts & Literary Arts Fellow at the Bellagio Center in Italy.
She has contributed book reviews, travel, opinion and analysis articles for The Guardian newspaper, The Financial Times, The Times Literary Supplement, City AM, Prospect magazine and The New York Times, among others.
Previously, she wrote travel guides for Lonely Planet and Rough Guide.
Born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, and raised in England, Noo attended King’s College London and Columbia University in New York. She supports Liverpool FC and is based in London.
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