Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town

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Even when he relishes a place, it often seems that it is the dirt, the stink and the squalor that inspires him. Paul Theroux’s books include Dark Star Safari, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Riding the Iron Rooster, The Great Railway Bazaar, The Elephanta Suite, A Dead Hand, The Tao of Travel and The Lower River. At times, he goes out of his way to satisfy some perverse curmudgeonly desire to pick theological disputes with Christian missionaries. There's little of southern Sudan (where most of the fighting is going on) or, for example, even much mention of Eritrea (which he also by-passed) beyond some war-talk, and while it is understandable that Theroux focusses on what he does see it would have been interesting to hear more, for example, about why he avoids certain areas.

One of the problems I had with travel in general was the ease and speed with which a person could be transported from the familiar to the strange, the moon shot whereby the New York office worker, say, is insinuated overnight into the middle of Africa to gape at gorillas. The rhetoric is so offensive and plain bizarre to anyone making her or his life in “Africa” that I had no option but to pretend that we were in a different genre, to keep imagining the book as a comic novel with a deliberately unlikeable narrator.The guide says “papyrus” or “hieroglyphic” or “Tutankhamen” or “one of the Ptolemys,” and you say “Yup. In this time he wrote a dozen volumes of highly praised fiction and a number of successful travel books, from which a selection of writings were taken to compile his book Travelling the World (Penguin, 1992).

Landmines are indeed a problem in parts of southern Sudan, but they are not the cause of population displacement. These homeless people were living in the guest rooms and had cooking fires going on the balconies and had rigged up tends on the verandas. The next best thing to going to Africa is to read (compulsively) this account by Paul Theroux of his overland expedition from Cairo to Capetown. Along the way, he makes literary references - some involving people he knows and meets, others purely by reference. I wouldn’t be surprised if this book brought down upon Theroux’ swampy head a heap of anger – and, indeed, charges of out and out racism.Beyond some very cramped car and bus rides and a few nasty beds and the annoying beggars he doesn't complain about (or describe) very many real unpleasantries. Zimbabwe is next,with its skyrocketing inflation,the repressive rule of Robert Mugabe and the forcible occupation of white farmers' farms by the blacks. Having worked in some of Eastern and Southern Africa in his younger days he is in a superb position to answer that question both from his own experiences and from the comments of the people that he meets, ranging from simple, near naked, fishermen to the Prime Minister of Uganda.

Calendar arrived safely in plastic-free packaging - which I've not seen before with a calendar, so kudos for that. Throughout the remainder of his account of his trip we are reminded of the uselessness of aid workers and, in particular, the offensive luxury of the vehicles they drive around in.And the present Ethiopian government, which has conducted a lengthy trial - in absentia - of the former dictator, on charges that include responsibility for the death of the emperor, has never claimed that he killed him with his own hands. In his first new travel book in eight years, the endearingly irascible Theroux takes readers the length of Africa by rattletrap bus, dugout canoe, cattle truck, armed convoy, ferry and train.