In this adventure motorsports memoir, the first Canadian motorcycle racer to complete the infamous Paris-Dakar Rally recounts his incredible journey. The Paris-Dakar Rally is is without question the most arduous and notorious off-road motorsports event on the planet. Since its inception in 1979, it has attracted more than three thousand adventurers from all walks of life. The men and women who have taken up the “Dakar challenge” have at least one thing in common: a desire to measure themselves against the desolate sands of the Sahara. In 2001, Canadian adventure racer Lawrence Hacking entered what would be the last rally on the iconic route from Paris to Dakar. In To Dakar and Back, Hacking, in collaboration with motorsport journalist Wil De Clercq, recounts the three weeks of blood, sweat, and tears that took him on that ten thousand kilometer journey in the heat of competition from the glitzy streets of the French capital through the hinterland of North Western Africa and the triumph of self-realization.
"I've realised that when things are really tough and there seems no hope for the future, it's sometimes just Chapter One of a really cool story, and the ending is entirely up to you."Joey Evans has always loved bikes, from his first second-hand Raleigh Strika at the age of six to the powerful off-road machines that became his passion later on in his life. His dream was one day to ride the most gruelling off-road race in the world, the 9000km Dakar Rally.In 2007 his dream was shattered when he broke his back in a racing accident. His spinal cord was crushed, leaving him paralysed from just below his chest. Doctors gave him a 10 per cent chance of ever walking again.Many would have given up and become resigned to life in a wheelchair, but not Joey Evans. Not only would he get back on his feet and walk, but he would also keep his Dakar dream alive. It was a long and painful road to recovery, involving years of intensive rehabilitation and training, but he had the love and support of both family and friends and an incredible amount of determination.Joey shares the many challenges he and his family faced, relating the setbacks, as well as successes, along the way to the Dakar start line. But the start line was only the first goa. His sights were set on reaching the finish line, which he did in 2017, the only South African to do so.From Para to Dakar is so much more than the story of one man reaching the Dakar finish line. It is a story of friendship and respect, compassion and kindness. It is about defying the odds to reach a dream, it is about grit, endurance and raw courage, and it is inspiring in its true heroism.
In 2004 Charley Boorman completed his astonishing round-the-world bike trip with his friend, Ewan McGregor. The journey left him exhausted, exhilarated and hungry for a new challenge. And what greater challenge than the Dakar rally? Beginning in Lisbon and ending in the Senegalese capital of Dakar, the rally covers 15,000 kilometres of treacherous terrain, and is widely regarded as the most dangerous race on earth. With his team-mates Simon Pavey and Matt Hall, Charley faced extreme temperatures, rode through shifting sands and stinging winds, and faced breakdowns miles from civilisation. Charley recounts his extraordinary adventures through Portugal, Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania, Mali, Guinea and Senegal. He also follows the stories of other riders - an eccentric, dedicated band of professionals and rookies who all dream of one thing: reaching the finishing line. Race to Dakar is the thrilling account of a race that has captured the imagination of millions.
Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in New York and Dakar, this book explores the Senegalese dance-rhythms Sabar from the research position of a dance student. It features a comparative analysis of the pedagogical techniques used in dance classes in New York and Dakar, which in turn shed light on different aesthetics and understandings of dance, as well as different ways of learning, in each context. Pointing to a loose network of teachers and students who travel between New York and Dakar around the practice of West African dance forms, the author discusses how this movement is maintained, what role the imagination plays in mobilizing participants and how the ‘cultural flow’ of the dances is ‘punctuated’ by national borders and socio-economic relationships. She explores the different meanings articulated around Sabar’s transatlantic movement and examines how the dance floor provides the grounds for contested understandings, socio-economic relationships and broader discourses to be re-choreographed in each setting.
An “entertaining and profoundly original” (San Francisco Chronicle) moving and hilarious tale of two friends who fly around the world trying to give away a lot of money and free themselves from a profound loss. • From the bestselling author of The Circle. “Nobody writes better than Dave Eggers about young men who aspire to be, at the same time, authentic and sincere.” —The New York Times Book Review "You Shall Know Our Velocity! is the work of a wildly talented writer.... Like Kerouac's book, Eggers's could inspire a generation as much as it documents it." —LA Weekly
On February 16 2016, motorcycle adventurer Charley Boorman suffered a major road traffic accident in Portugal. Having spent the better part of his life on some form of motorbike, his world came crashing down after he was knocked off a Triumph Tiger Explorer, smashing his right ankle and causing severe damage to his left fibia and tibia. It was unclear if he would ever walk properly again, let alone ride a motorbike. Moving between past and present, Long Way Back recounts Charley's journey back of recovery, the ambulance ride, the numerous operations in a Portuguese hospital, the medivac aircraft flight back to London. In alternating chapters, as his inability to walk for several months provokes introspection, Boorman recounts his childhood, where his passion for motorbikes began, and the formative influences in his life - from his father, a touring film director, to his long-time friend Ewan McGregor, and Sean Connery's son Jason, who first introduced him to bikes. As Charley struggles to cope with this potentially life-changing situation, it is these touchstones who will give him strength on the long way back to health.
City Life from Jakarta to Dakar focuses on the politics incumbent to this process – an "anticipatory politics" – that encompasses a wide range of practices, calculations and economies. As such, the book is not a collection of case studies on a specific theme, not a review of developmental problems, nor does it marshal the focal cities as evidence of particular urban trends. Rather, it examines how possibilities, perhaps inherent in these cities all along, are materialized through the everyday projects of residents situated in the city and the larger world in very different ways.
When a reporter for The New York Times uproots her family to move to West Africa, she manages her new role as breadwinner while finding women cleverly navigating extraordinary circumstances in a forgotten place for much of the Western world. “A story you will not soon forget.”—Kathryn Bigelow, Academy Award–winning director of The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty In 2015, Dionne Searcey was covering the economy for The New York Times, living in Brooklyn with her husband and three young children. Saddled with the demands of a dual-career household and motherhood in an urban setting, her life was in a rut. She decided to pursue a job as the paper’s West Africa bureau chief, an amazing but daunting opportunity to cover a swath of territory encompassing two dozen countries and 500 million people. Landing with her family in Dakar, Senegal, she quickly found their lives turned upside down as they struggled to figure out their place in this new region, along with a new family dynamic where she was the main breadwinner flying off to work while her husband stayed behind to manage the home front. In Pursuit of Disobedient Women follows Searcey’s sometimes harrowing, sometimes rollicking experiences of her work in the field, the most powerful of which, for her, center on the extraordinary lives and struggles of the women she encounters. As she tries to get an American audience subsumed by the age of Trump and inspired by a feminist revival to pay attention, she is gone from her family for sometimes weeks at a time, covering stories like Boko Haram–conscripted teen-girl suicide bombers or young women in small villages shaking up social norms by getting out of bad marriages. Ultimately, Searcey returns home to reconcile with skinned knees and school plays that happen without her and a begrudging husband thrown into the role of primary parent. Life, for Searcey, as with most of us, is a balancing act. She weaves a tapestry of women living at the crossroads of old-fashioned patriarchy and an increasingly globalized and connected world. The result is a deeply personal and highly compelling look into a modern-day marriage and a world most of us have barely considered. Readers will find Searcey’s struggles, both with her family and those of the women she meets along the way, familiar and relatable in this smart and moving memoir.
Charley Boorman is back on his bike exploring the world's second largest country - home to some of the most stunning and challenging terrain known to man. Canada is a country of extremes, and Charley knows all about pushing the limits. He goes dirt biking in New Brunswick, dives through old shipwrecks in Tobermory and rides along Butch Cassidy's old Outlaw Trail. He also meets a fascinating mix of people on his journey. As he heads across Canada, he plays ice hockey with a legend of the game; spends a day as a Mountie cadet and nearly meets a ghost in Winnipeg . . . Written with Charley's trademark enthusiasm and humour, Extreme Frontiers is fast-paced, hugely entertaining and packed with adventure (and rather a lot of mosquitoes).
Dakar is scared. When her family left East Africa to spend a year or two in Cottonwood, North Dakota, Dakar's older sister, Jakarta, was adamant about staying behind. Now Jakarta is all by herself in Kenya...and she's missing. It's terrible to go through life cringing, sure that at any minute a blow is going to come from somewhere. Dakar doesn't want to worry, but she can't help it. What if Jakarta was in the middle of a Nairobi bombing? What if Mom gets caught by hoodies and forced back into that place when Jakarta isn't even there to help? What if Dad decides to go off to save lives and is seized by some mysterious disease? If Dakar were able to do three really brave things, would that be enough to keep her family together? Almost everything in Cottonwood, North Dakota, requires bravery from a girl who has grown up in Kenya, Ethiopia, Egypt, and Senegal. The possibility of a new friend, navigating a new school, and preparing for snow—the first Dakar will ever see—is the least of it. Jakarta is missing...when she's home and when she's not. And for Jakarta, Dakar will battle the universe.
