by Will Ferguson
Recommended by Nino Ricci
The Amnesty International Book Club is pleased to announce our May 2017 title 419 by Will Ferguson. This title has been recommended by guest reader Nino Ricci, the Book Club’s first guest reader in January 2014. In this guide, you’ll find Ricci’s reflection on the book and the time he spent teaching in Nigeria, as well as discussion questions, an Amnesty background section, and an action you can take to improve Canada’s role in international mining activities.
419 provides an in-depth look into a Nigerian email scam that most people are familiar with. The novel starts with Laura learning of her father’s suicide. We soon find out that he had fallen for an email scam and as a result, remortgaged the house she grew up in, leaving her mother with almost nothing. Weaving through Laura’s story and that of three other characters from various parts of Nigeria, 419 provides readers with adventure, thrill, and, at times, heartbreak.
The Amnesty International Book Club hopes that through the reading experience you reflect on how people are impacted by the extractive sector, including oil, mining, and gas. We’ve included background information on Shell’s presence in the Niger Delta. Then, consider adding your voice to Amnesty International’s call for an extractive sector Ombudsperson in Canada.
Click below to download the discussion guide.
About Nino Ricci
Nino Ricci’s involvement with Amnesty International began in the 1980s, when the founder of the school he taught at while in Nigeria with CUSO, political reformer Tai Solarin, was arrested following a military coup and was adopted by Amnesty as a prisoner of conscience. Since then he has worked with Amnesty in a number of ways, most recently as a spokesperson for the Amnesty International Book Club. He has also been active with the writers’ freedom of expression organization PEN Canada, and served as its president during a period when it helped spearhead an international campaign against the imprisonment of Nigerian writer and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa.
Nino is the author of the Lives of the Saints trilogy, which was adapted as a miniseries starring Sophia Loren, and of the novels Testament, The Origin of Species and, most recently, Sleep. He is a two-time winner of both the Governor General’s Award and the Canadian Authors’ Award for fiction, as well as of England’s Betty Trask Award and Winnifred Holtby Prize and France’s Prix Contrepoint. In 2011 he was appointed a member of the Order of Canada. He lives in Toronto with writer Erika de Vasconcelos and their children.
About the Author
Will Ferguson
Travel writer and novelist Will Ferguson is the author of several award-winning memoirs, including Beyond Belfast, about a 560-mile walk across Northern Ireland in the rain; Hitching Rides With Buddha, about an end-to-end journey across Japan by thumb; and most recently the humour collection Canadian Pie, which includes his travels from Yukon to PEI.
Ferguson’s novels include Happiness™, a satire set in the world of self-help publishing, and Spanish Fly, a coming-of-age tale of con men and call girls set amid the jazz clubs of the Great Depression. His work, which has been published in more than twenty languages around the world, has been nominated for both an IMPAC Dublin Award and a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and he is a three-time winner of the Leacock Medal.
