Lara Pawson's extraordinary and important book describes a vital moment in Africa's post-independent history. Pawson exposes a murderous regime, a forgotten massacre and those who supported it. She is right to target certain (frequently European) Marxists, or more accurately revolutionary nationalists who gave the MPLA government a radical camouflage. Pawson writes with irresistible force about a generation of radicals who many of us depended on for a critical understanding of African politics, history and commentary. So as well as uncovering the massacre the book also looks at the contradictory relationship of a generation of (mostly) white radical intellectuals to apparently progressive and socialist regimes that emerged in the second wave of independence in Africa in the 1970s. It is not often that you can say this about a single book but Africa's modern history will never look the same again.