"This House Has Fallen" is a bracing, disturbing and evocative report on the perilous condition of one of the most complex multi-ethnic nations. The world's tenth most populous country with 110 million inhabitants, a pot-pourri of languages and peoples, and boundless dynamism, Nigeria is the pivotal point of the African continent. As Nigeria goes, so goes Africa, and, as Karl Maier makes vividly clear, things are not going at all well. Each year, with depressing consistency, Nigeria is declared one of the most corrupt countries in the world. While billions of dollars of oil money flows into the country, the nation's per capita income has plummeted during the past two decades, with the bulk of the money stolen by elites. A country of rapidly rising ethnic and religious tensions and rapidly falling living standards, Nigeria is a pressure cooker building dangerously close to an explosion that would send shock waves throughout Africa and beyond.