This story was well-told and engaging throughout. I think it will definitely find its right audience and continue to inspire.

This was a really interesting graphic novel. The whole time that I was reading it, I wasn't really sure where is would go next. Seeing how the family was so tight knit at the beginning of the book to how they were in the middle of the story to how they were at the end was fascinating to read. I think that the family dynamic was my favorite part of this book. It was very well executed and the relationship between Hans and his wife was a rollercoaster. I also did not see the ending coming which is always a good thing in my book.

I liked this but not as much as I wanted to.
There was promise in this novel but it did not execute it well.

It wasn't all bad. Some factors were great about the novel but it was just not for me.

I was really intrigued with this one but it lacks in execution. I don't like the plot but the characters are amazing though!

Received via NetGalley for review.

Great art and coloring, but fairly predictable plot that plays out exactly as you'd expect.

I received an e-arc from netgalley and read the graphic novel a while ago. I am struggling with rating this story, while it is a story that needs to be told, it creeped me out. European white man gets the opportunity to move Africa to work at a new cushy job. Brings wife and daughter and they live in a gated community with all the other white family’s who are pretty racist towards black staff. Has a lot of predictable situations and over time there view appear to blend more with their neighbours. It gives us a view of the growing resentment of the blacks against the white families coming into and taking over their country. I feel the ending was a bit of a twist but I am conflicted on how it was executed.

A story about a white German family's adventure moving to Lagos. The personal and institutional racism shape their experience and while they experience privilege and paradise on the surface, the toxic system eventually poisons their relationships. I would read more from this author.

The story was promising, but it ultimately disappointed me. I think it's because this has already been seen. I like a fact that is happening in Nigeria - it was interesting, and I like the pictures with the babywearing. I don't know exactly what, but something is missing in a hole story. Nice artwork!

In 2016 Veerle Hildebrandt won the YIEHA Young Talent Award for her debut Joyride, from which Black Paradise emerged two years later. A little less autobiographical, but not much, because whoever looks at Joyride recognizes many of the situations, although they are often drawn slightly differently. Black Paradise, the adult version of her debut, appeared in Dutch in 2018 and is now also available in English.

Black Paradise tells the story of a family - mother Katie, father Hans and daughter Lisa - who move to Nigeria because Hans has been offered a wonderful job there. Lisa herself does not feel like leaving Germany, but has to accept it because she is too young to be left alone. Once arrived in Nigeria, it all turns out to be a lot of trouble: the cupboard of a house, well secured, with a swimming pool and if she is introduced to the pony club and, as a blow, a pony, a very own pony! her parents can no longer break life naturally.
Life seems like a big party for Lisa, but it is getting harder for her father. Many work knots are being cut while enjoying a drink and the favors of women in the Black Paradise strip club, and his alternative of a nice dinner in a good restaurant is not in the least. Katie finds it increasingly difficult to enjoy, when Hans is more and more often out of the house at night because of his work, and she is confronted outside time and again with the certainly not subtle racism of her fellow expats.
Paradise is becoming less and less paradise-like until Hans and Katie are forced (again) to choose.

Black Paradise is starting a bit slowly, but looks - especially in Nigeria - beautiful and multi-colored. Moreover, it was extremely easy for me, as a former horse girl, to move to Lisa who first did not want to go to Nigeria at all, but of course never wanted to return to Germany after getting acquainted with the pony Chess.
Yet she of course also notices some of the (not so paradisaical) life of the black people and of the problems that crept into the marriage of Katie and Hans. It is a shame that the storytelling perspective swings back and forth, making it difficult to really put yourself in the shoes of Katie, Hans or Lisa, so that their stories remain too far away. But that is also the only point of criticism of this otherwise great debut.

This is not the kind of Graphic novel that I enjoy. It’s about this German family moving to Nigeria for the fathers job. I think it was realistic, but I did not enjoy at all how these ‘white’ people were talking to the ‘black’ people. And not only talking, they just really felt they were better than them. Because of this I wasn’t really liking the characters.
Also the story just felt really flat to me. Not so much was happening, and I think better things could have been done with the story since the set up was really interesting!
I was also not a huge fan of the drawings, just not my style I guess.

'Black Paradise' is a graphic novel with script and art by Veerle Hildebrandt. The art was the only thing I liked in the book.

It a book about postcolonialism in Nigeria and how a family responds to that new way of life. Not to give any spoilers, but basically a story of white people enjoying the advantages of being white. Males having affairs with black servents, teenagers seeing the misery of others but forgetting about it as soon as they arrive at the horses' stable for a ride or women being racist or ignoring dead corpses in the street and going on with their supermarket shopping.

All the story goes flat because is a mere "let me show you this" without any follow-through or reflection. There was no point to any of the racism portrait. Not surprisingly, it is the perspective of a white person who does not seen to know how to approach the topic of race, or white privilege. .

#BlackParadise #NetGalley

I chose Black Paradise by Veerle Hilderbrandt from Netgalley as it would be my first ever translated Graphic Novel and I was excited to read. Black Paradise is about a family from Germany who move to Lagos in Nigeria because of the Dad's job and the novel follows them while living in Nigeria. I like how the chapters had their own headings which slowly got darker not only for the country but for the family unit as well and I thought that was really clever. I loved the muted artwork too. I would recommend anyone who loves graphic novels and are looking for something different to the norm. So I am giving this 4 stars

An underwhelming exploration of race, adultery and privilege in modern Africa.

I was sent this ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is a stylishly illustrated graphic novel exploring a number of different hard hitting issues such as rascism, colonialism and infidelity. Lisa's family move to Lagos due to her father's job and things are certainly different from her life in Germany. The graphic novel explores how each of the family adjust to the new environment and how they react to the treatment of the black people who are in servitude roles to the whites coming over from Germany. It was hard to read at time due to how far we have come since the time of the novel but it is important to read to make sure we don't return to a time like that.

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This graphic novel was really eye opening and powerful. It was interesting to read about a European family moving to Nigeria to work. The racism and post-colonial ways of life was appalling. Graphic novels that touch on more serious issues or that depict the past are so powerful and important.

Even though a little confusing, I enjoyed reading. Thanks to Netgalley. I would recommend this book.

I've never at all understood the mentality of some people. Whether it be Nazis, or Russians in Poland at the end of WW2, or colonial types in Africa and Asia, the first thing they do is denigrate and belittle the women until they're practically subhuman, and then they either rape or have sex with them. I can see rape is definitely a derogatory thing to do to someone, but why tell yourself a woman is practically of another species one day, then sully yourself with them the next? That aside apart, this book has a lot more to it than just colonialist shagging. But I have to warn you it doesn't have what I assumed was going to happen based on the front cover art. Our handsome Aryan man in Germany has left for Lagos, Nigeria, with his attractive wife and bubbly blonde daughter. You'd think gate-keepers, chauffeurs, maids, an interior swimming pool and a panic room would be a wonderful situation – that is, if you hadn't witnessed any other such narratives. Our man is so politely western he dislikes the 'Black Paradise' strip club, where the clientele are one colour and the workers the other. But that helps cause trouble at work, there's trouble at home, and this workaholic slowly has to work out how and where he's going to get some relief…

Several things are very good about this volume. It's a thick thing, but it reads very quickly. A lot of it is a quite soapy story from the girl's point of view, of her gaining friends and experiences, and a pony, but it doesn't suffer at all from having so many pages concentrating on her and her pets and hobbies. And it never tries to tell us whether those friends and experiences are worth it, but leaves us to decide whether we would find such a place a 'black paradise', whether we would come to value our time in such a heightened, singular environment, and whether we too would take advantage of the staff and home lifestyle in the ways shown here. Tales of ex-pat regret are ten a penny if you look hard enough, and must surely be close to finishing replacing the tales of colonial glorification. This piece is much more morally ambiguous, and even if the artwork doesn't quite show the shadows the lovely bright sun must cause, it certainly provides for some strong entertainment.

Thank you to Europe Comics for making available a digital edition of Veerle Hildebrandt’s ‘Black Paradise’ in exchange for an honest review.

This graphic novel with script and art by Hildebrandt is semi-autobiographical. As a child she had lived with her family in Nigeria for some years in the early 1990s. In 2016 Hildebrandt had written ‘Joyride’ based on those experiences. It appears that ‘Black Paradise’ expands on those themes in a fictional context.

In the story Hans Wagner moves his family to Lagos in order to take a high-paying position. He and his wife, Katie, enjoy the luxury of their new life yet find the ingrained racism within the expatriate community upsetting. Yet while they speak up about it their attitudes are shrugged off as naive by longer term residents.

Lisa, their daughter, is at first upset about relocating but soon makes friends and joins a pony club. However, the stress associated with Han’s job creates tension between her parents that are complicated by their housekeeper’s attentions towards Hans. In addition, the country is in political turmoil.

Hildebrandt’s artwork is very striking and I took time to visit her website to gain a sense of her wider artistic style.

This was clearly a family drama that in places made uncomfortable reading in terms of the casual racism and sense of unexamined white privilege expressed by many characters. At first, I thought the title was meant to be ironic given the realities of the community but it also is the name of a ‘gentleman’s club’ frequented by the corporate types that Hans works with. To his credit Hans is uncomfortable but is mocked and told off by his boss for his idealism.

‘Black Paradise’ is something a coming of age story though the format of graphic novel only seems to allow a reporting of the events that shape Lisa’s experience over the kind of examination a more conventional novel would provide. Still, it has its powerful moments and the art expresses the contrasts of life in the country during that period.

While it’s not really the kind of graphic novel that I usually read, I found it interesting and quite sobering.

A fictionalized expansion of the themes and Nigerian locations that Veerle Hildebrandt previously visited in her graphic memoir Joyride, Black Paradise tells the story of a German family's brief work posting in Lagos in the early '90s through the eyes of a child. Hildebrandt's art is a brilliant mixture of realism and exaggeration, with a colour palate that mirrors the mood of the scenes.

The story follows the family from their hopeful arrival (they're thrilled by the pool in their company house and horrified by their colleagues' neo-colonial-type racism and classism), through their growing bitterness as they become the people they previously were shocked by until they return to Germany.

The book feels like an honest recounting of that style of expat life as filtered through the eyes of a child, but for that same reason I would warn anyone looking for an uplifting story away. The blunt racism and paternalism of the expats is presented without commentary, so anyone looking for those attitudes to be explicitly challenged will be disappointed. As such, I would recommend this for a mature audience (and as a side note for anyone reading the book in public, it also includes quite a bit of sexual partial nudity - the Black Paradise of the title is a strip club).

I read an e-ARC via NetGalley.

I was excited to read Black Paradise because it was graphic novel set in Nigeria and based on the book description seemed to have an intriguing story line. Yet, I walked away very disappointed. The only thing beautiful about the book were the illustrations, which by the way were superior. What I found was a book filled with negative tropes about Africa and the people. The premise was that Hans and his family relocate to Nigeria because he has a great job opportunity. He and his wife, Katie, thought it would be a great opportunity to live in paradise. But that is not what they found. To illustrate this, the author chose to focus on all the negative aspects of Nigeria including the poverty, political unrest, and corruption in business. That's fair because there are those aspects in Nigeria. However, what I found disheartening is that the author Veerle Hildebrandt decided to create a story that played up all the negative stereotypes of African/black people. At first, I thought she was going to use this book to debunk those stereotypes because she initially had Hans and Katie being uncomfortable associating with the expatriates who made racist remarks and treated the local people with disdain and disrespect. Yet, they began to buy into the thinking as well. The Nigerian women were sexualized. According to the expatriate wives that's all the black women were about. In fact, they warn Katie to keep an eye on her maid because all of the men were sleeping with black women. And true enough, her housekeeper is the initiator in an affair with Hans. If they weren't a maid, then they were strippers. All of the men frequent a sex club called "Black Paradise". The Nigerian men are slow and backward thinking. For example, the children ask the gardener to use his shovel to bury a bird they found dead covered in ants. He says "Bury a dead bird? You should it instead!" The author later shows the gardener digging it back up and the kids question--did we eat it? And a stereotypical book about Africa wouldn't be complete without including the trope of "black magic" because aren't these people backward in believing in hexes. And the author doesn't disappoint making "juju" an important part to the story. After reading the novel , I was left wondering what was the point of the book. It definitely was not to humanize people that have historically been made one dimensional. If the author had chosen another country outside of Africa, would this have been how she would depicted a paradise gone wrong? I will never know. What I do know is that I cannot endorse this book.