Reporting from Equatorial Guinea in central Africa, the authors focus on the social transformations unfolding, as revenues from offshore oil extraction are used to build infrastructure on which rising labour productivity, industry, and progress depend. Pulled into the world market as never before, both a capitalist class and a working class are being born. Index, 160pp, UK. PATHFINDER BOOKS.

Reporting from Equatorial Guinea in central Africa, the authors focus on the social transformations unfolding, as revenues from offshore oil extraction are used to build infrastructure on which rising labour productivity, industry, and progress depend. Pulled into the world market as never before, both a capitalist class and a working class are being born. Index, 160pp, UK. PATHFINDER BOOKS. IN SPANISH

On 7th March 2004, former SAS soldier and mercenary Simon Mann prepared to take off from Harare International Airport with an aeroplane full of heavy weaponry and guns for hire. Their destination: the former Spanish colony of Equatorial Guinea. Their mission: to remove one of the most brutal dictators in Africa in a privately organised coup d'etat. The plot had the tacit approval of Western intelligence agencies and, according to Mann, the backing of a European government and the endorsement of a former British Prime Minister. Simon Mann had personally planned, overseen and won two wars in Angola and Sierra Leone. Everything should have gone right. Why, then, did it go so wrong? When Simon was released from five years' incarceration in two of Africa's toughest prisons, he made worldwide headlines. Since then, he has spoken to nobody about his experiences. Now, he is telling everything. 288pp, UK. BLAKE PUBLISHING.

New in paperback. It is Lisbon in the year 1905 and our hero, Luis Bernardo Valenca, a 37-year-old bachelor and owner of a small shipping business, is revelling in the luxury of Lisbon's high society. Intellectually curious, he writes about politics in his spare time, believing that Portugal's vast empire is having a civilising effect on the far-off lands it has colonised. But his life is turned upside down when King Dom Carlos asks him to become governor of Portugal's smallest colony, the tiny island of Sao Tome e Principe, stuck out in the Atlantic off the coast of equatorial West Africa, whose economy rests almost entirely on its cocoa plantations. Translated from the Portuguese by Peter Bush. 384pp, UK. BLOOMSBURY.

Vibrant music from Equatorial Guinea. 12 tracks, 54:47mins, SPAIN.

In a fly-blown bar in West Africa, British war reporter James Brabazon found himself being briefed on covert military plans to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea by one of Africa's most notorious mercenaries - his friend Nick du Toit. The Byzantine plot, its farcical execution and its tragic conse-quences led to Simon Mann and a host of celebrated guns-for-hire falling victim to their own avaricious plans, Machiavellian scheming and ruthless double-crosses. In a twist of fate, James Brabazon remained free. His mercenary friend wasn't so lucky. Nick du Toit was sentenced to serve thirty-four years in Black Beach prison, Africa's most notorious jail - a sentence which James could have been serving alongside him. Their unlikely friendship began two years earlier on the bloody battlefields of the Liberian civil war. With Nick as his bodyguard, James was the only journalist to film behind rebel lines. Establishing him as a brave and talented filmmaker, the war tested James's physical and moral boundaries to the limit - and opened a door on to a dangerous world of mercenaries, spies and violent regime change. 352pp, UK. CANONGATE.

Investigates the paradox at the heart of present-day Gulf of Guinea politics. The governance crisis festering throughout every one of the region's states ought to discourage outsiders from capital-intensive, long-term commercial involvement and cast doubts over the political survival of ruling cliques. However, the presence of large petroleum deposits radically changes this equation: the negative dynamics of state failure affect the general population but spare the oil nexus. The material and political resources made available by oil allow states to survive regardless of bad policies, facilitate their governing elites' material success regardless of reckless management, earn international allies regardless of erratic domestic conduct, and make companies want to invest regardless of risk. The recent oil boom only strengthens this paradoxical viability. Index, bib, 379pp, UK. HURST & CO.

A thorough survey of all aspects of Equatorial Guinea. Bibliography, index. Maps, 216pp, USA. ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD.

Selected as one of the six best non-fiction books of 1990 by the New York Times Book Review, this is a compelling and entertasining account of the author's two-and-a-half year adventure in Equatorial Guinea, and his efforts to get this small bankrupt African nation on the path of structural development. xiv, 281pp. index. USA, BASIC BOOKS.

New, updated edition. On 7 March 2004, Zimbabwean police impounded a plane which flew in from South Africa with 64 alleged mercenaries on board. The group, led by Nick Du Toit and former SAS member Simon Mann, were planning a coup in Equatorial Guinea. Within a few days of the failed takeover, Du Toit appeared on TV and admitted everything, almost certainly after torture. Investigators soon found that the plot was funded not by oil tycoons but by celebrity investors. Several names were put forward, including Sir Mark Thatcher and Jeffrey Archer. The target of the coup was Obiang Nguema, the president of Equatorial Guinea, Africa's third largest oil producer. 336pp, UK. PROFILE BOOKS.