ABOUT
THE BOOK

On the Gold Coast is a complex and multilayered novel set in West Africa in 1980. Six Europeans – a young man in search of his missing father, two couples in search of a solution to their marital problems, and a mysterious young woman who keeps changing her identity – follow the trail described in the famous travel memoir White Rider, Black Horse. Its author, Igor Hladnik has mysteriously disappeared, leaving behind only the unfinished manuscript of his last African journey (also undertaken along the trail of his previous jorney). Mysteries pile up as the travellers’ paths cross and re-cross, leading them to the Gold Coast. Through Cameroon, Nigeria, Niger, Upper Volta and Ghana, they follow in each other’s footsteps, unaware that the mysterious Adriana is playing with their lives and weaving the threads of their experiences into a fateful tapestry to escape her inner emptiness. Inspired by the descriptions in Hladnik’s books, they find their encounter with the real Africa blurred, almost obscured, or, rather, distorted by the power of literature and the visual media which influence, even dictate their perceptions.