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Dark Star Safari (Paul Theroux, 2002)

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ISBN 0-1402-8111-8

Further Reading

By the Same Author

Similar Writing

  • Nobody writes like Theroux; Jonathan Raban possibly comes closest although he's never written anything about Africa that I'm aware of. 

Once upon a time, Paul Theroux defined the standard for travel writing, at least for me he did. In particular, his first work in the genre, The Great Railway Bazaar, rewrote the record book. In the following years, books like The Old Patagonian Express and Kingdom by the Sea - to my mind - carved out a new niche; an eerie of acute percipience he had all to himself. Riding the Iron Rooster was perhaps too long, too ambitious a work to sustain the same intensity, but was brilliantly observed and compellingly written, all the same. He seemed to be quite off-form when he hatched The Happy Isles of Oceania. With The Pillars of Hercules we see something of a return to his old self, though I think the constant self-justification betrays something - some loss of confidence perhaps.

Which brings us to Dark Star Safari ... and back to Theroux at his powerful best.

Theroux is normally a fairly apolitical animal; any grudges he appears to bear seem to be directed more against universal foolishness than against any particular philosophy. So I'm inclined to accept his observations of African politics at face value. They accord with most everything else one reads about the continent, anyway. And it makes depressing reading. African problems have very little to do with geography or climate or crop failures or lack of resources. Bad government, and almost that alone, is responsible for Africa's problems. Bad government, everywhere; in every African country. Without seeking to excuse the obnoxious colonial powers which raped and pillaged the continent until as late as the 1960s or so, it is genuinely difficult to see how the state of affairs today can be blamed on them. These days, Africans stick it to Africans, and Theroux is there to observe.

Recommendation: Highly recommended.

Look and Feel: My edition is the usual matt-finish paperback.

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