I Do Not Come to You By Chance by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani

This is the novel that will answer all your questions about those Nigerian email scams that everyone has encountered at least once. The central character of the novel, Kingsley, sets off into the Nigerian job market, with high hopes that his degree in chemical engineering will land him a great job. When that does not happen and Kingsley's father becomes very ill, Kingsley is forced to turn to his barely-literate but insanely wealthy email scammer uncle, Cash Daddy, for money. Before long, Kingsley joins Cash Daddy's email scam operation and becomes extremely successful. His star begins to rise. He is finally able to look after his family and buy himself everything he has ever wanted or needed. Everything, except the respect of the woman he loves.
     The novel opens innocuously enough with a village scene, Chinua Achebe-style. The unsuspecting reader would never guess that (s)he is about to be sucked, along with Kingsley, into a world that is so outrageous that it must be real. Nwaubani keeps the plot moving with a mixture of hyperbole (mosquitoes "riding on horseback", clothes that cost "a lung and a kidney"), the details of the surreal scams and the much-flaunted wealth of the email scammers in the story. I will always carry the image of Cash Daddy yelling, "Your head is not correct!"
     An entertaining novel about greed, the fast lane, Third World pragmatism and the limits of what money can buy.