Rating: 
Summary: Dark side of Africa
Review: After reading the review in the New York Times book section, I was pleased to see another book by one of my favorite travel writers. After reading "The sweetest Dream" by Doris Lessing (fiction) I was prepared for the grim reality of a non-luxury trip through third world countries..I agree with Paul on his critique of "Dreaming of Africa", the Kenya he wrote about is nothing like the movie or the book having read and seen both. African nations suffering from corrupt governments, abuse of funds, disease, famine, lack of education, poor schools if any..one has the notion from reading Hemingway, and various documentaries on Safari that all is pristine and unspoiled..far from it!! If anything its much worse then I had thought..this truly is a continent that is going to give up the ghost and become a hotbed of political contention in a few years at the rapid rate its natural resources are being depleted under corrupt rule..hospitals with no resources to treat patients..here are the poorest people on the face of the earth!
Rating:
Summary: Mister Nice Guy
Review: Every word that Paul Theroux ever writes is great, but I approached this with special anticipation for two reasons. The first was that he describes travel in parts of Africa chronicled by his rival in the gentle art of saying nasty things about people, Evelyn Waugh. The second was that he was revisiting places he had known intimately, 35 years ago, and I was eager to learn what reasons a penetrating intellect like his could give for what has happened in Africa.
Well, he is not quite as good as Evelyn Waugh, and the reason I think, is that he is not nasty enough. The truly effective satirist holds no punches and takes no prisoners. Deep down inside , Theroux has a heart of gold, an unfortunate possession for an ironist, and he cannot entirely conceal it. Waugh was moralist too. a devout Catholic, but he never let kindness get in the way of a good savage stab. Maybe it's an Anglo-American difference, with the Americans never properly trained to be completely unpleasant.
Theroux is a well qualified expert on Africa. He even has the rare accomplishment of speaking several African languages, and the range of works that he quotes indicates a full study of its history and politics. The disappointing fact stands out that liberation from European colonial rule did not produce the automatic improvement in life for Africans that we (the nice leftwing liberals) had hoped,and that's an understatement. What went wrong? He comes up with some interesting answers. I don't know if they're the right ones, but they're well worth reading.
Rating: 
Summary: He has completed his transition
Review: Theroux was becoming a grouch and a crab in Pillars of Hercules. His writing was going downhill then and now he is complete. He is mocking, sniggering, back-stabbing and complaining the whole time. He is nastily anti-Christian and insults them to their face and in print. He makes snide remarks about people who go to Africa to see the animals, "pestering" in his words, and then hypocritically proceeds to go to a luxury resort that few of us could afford and .... sees the animals. Theroux is an elitist who looks down his nose at most of the rest of us. Lots of tedious passages in this book, reading about this breakdown, that flat tire, etc.Only valuable part of this book is the heartbreaking view of the poverty in Africa that is being made worse, not better, by the aid we have been sending. There are other books that are worth reading. This is the last book of his I will buy and I used to be a real fan.
Rating: 
Summary: Editing mistakes
Review: I really enjoyed this book (like all the others of Theroux that I have read) as it I could really imagine the places that he went to. Theroux's insight and observations are fascinating.
The only criticism I have is that we do not know how long it took him to complete his journey. Or did he perhaps interrupt his travels?
I also found it quite disturbing that there were a few editing mistakes: the Big Five does not include the giraffe but consists of the elephant, lion, leopard, buffalo and rhinoceros. A freeway in Afrikaans is not a "vryweg" but a "hoofweg".
He also tends to repeat himself a bit. Perhaps some tighter editing in the next edition is called for.
Rating:
Summary: I Savored Every Page
Review: I read a lot and most of it isn't very good, but I savor every
word and every page of Theroux's travel books. I eagerly awaited the mailman delivering this book to me and I wasn't disappointed. Theroux is not just one of the best travel writers
working today he's one of the best writers in general. If you want to know how the world works (or doesn't), read Theroux.
Rating:
Summary: Theroux isn't politically correct but he knows Africa
Review: It may be hard for readers today to understand the Africa of hope and promise that Paul Therous knew in the 1960s and the Africa he finds so painfully unadvanced today. I lived in Africa in that period, and to me, this is not a "dismal" book but one that is clear eyed and realistic about what Africa is and isn't today. It is written by someone who loves not the fancy life of an expat but the ordinary life of small African towns and rural countryside, who knows how to travel in a lowkey way through obscure places, for which I truly admire him. I know some of the areas he describes and he has the detail and the nuance just right. I found it hard to put down, for the adventure and description but also for reflections on times past and present. He's an odd duck in many ways, but to do what he does, travelling for weeks by yourself in order to fit into the background of the story, you would have to be. A really good book.
Rating:
Summary: Africa the Hard Way
Review: As a fan of Theroux's I was quite happy to find this book on the local shelves. Anyone familiar with the author's work won't be disappointed. Disdainful, witty, observant and tireless as ever, our old friend paints a varied picture of a troubled continent. Traveling overland the length of Africa is not for the faint of heart. This is travel at its best...local buses, overcrowded mini-vans, cattle trucks and rickety trains. I especially enjoyed Theroux's exposure of the holier-than-thou "missionaries" and selfish aid workers who wouldn't even give the guy a lift to the next town. I'd have to say, however, the best thing about the book is Theroux's willingness to venture into the places we're warned not to go: Sudan, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and Johannesburg. It's a window on the continent for the armchair traveler interested in what it's really like, without the media hype. I must admit to being annoyed, however, with some of Theroux's usual elitist observations. At one point, while serving chicken to his fellow stranded travelers in the middle of nowhere, he comments, (and I paraphrase) "This is probably one of the few times you're likely to be served by a member of the American Academy of Fine Arts." At other times his continual trashing of traditional safari tourists, his nose in the air toward people who go to Africa for the animals, gets a little old. There is a certain snobbery in the travel world against people on package tours and Theroux heads the list. It's especially galling when, toward the end of the book, he himself spends some time in an extremely comfy game lodge, extolling the benefits of sipping South African wine, being served sumptuous meals and writing at his desk like the spoiled tourists he snubs. That aside, I'd highly recommend the book for anyone interested in learning about life on the road in 21st century Africa. Often it's not a pretty story but it certainly is entertaining. I'm already awaiting Theroux's next book. Asante sana, Paul.
Rating:
Summary: Thanks for saving me the pain!
Review: Anyone who has ever had that honest encounter with the mirror and the stark realization that their life is undeniably half-over must read this book! Theroux has written a terrific book. It is a multi-layer journey, too complex and too full to summerize. Hence, the advice...just read it. But, let me, as someone who has lived in Malawi and subsequently returned over a dozen times, remark on one aspect of Theroux's gift. It is the gift of courage. I have encountered almost every corner of Malawi, wrapping myself in the warmth, humor and secure feeling that no matter what kind of a jam I might get myself into there would emerge a smiling villager to eradicate my anxieties. One area of the country I have never been able to screw up the guts to visit is its southern tip, where the wide, slow moving, mosquito infested Shire River begins its surge into the unknown towards the Zambezi. It is as far from security as one could hope to get in southern Africa. No, no, not for me...or anyone else I have ever known who has traveled that region. Theroux, on the other hand, simply looks up a villager with a dugout and he is off, down the river. It is a trip I wish I had the courage to take. I thank him for taking it for me. I thank him for saving me the pain. I thank him for describing it is a way that I could feel "as if" I had made the trip myself. So much has been made of Theroux's misanthropic inclinations that it does not merit mention in a review. It is old scribblings. Refocus your thoughts. The issue to me is how he manages to convey so much personal pleasure (albeit intermittant) while putting himself through such a test of fortitude. I can only speculate on the answer, but I do want to convey my thanks for his good old, John Wayne type of courage. Thanks to Theroux for being my DT (designated traveler), especially beacause I lacked the vacation time and the gusto to step off Africa's paved roads! Those of us sharing his spiral toward late, late middle age, must thank him for his gift...a gift that demonstrates that, if he is a misanthrope, he is certianly a very altruistic misanthrope.
Rating:
Summary: "Hoping for the picturesque, expecting misery..."
Review: Forty years after being a Peace Corps worker in Malawi and a teacher in Uganda, Paul Theroux returns to Africa and finds things changed--for the worse. Now approaching his sixtieth birthday and wanting to escape from cell phones, answering machines, the daily newspaper, and being "put on hold," he is determined to travel from Cairo to Cape Town. He believes that the continent "contain[s] many untold tales and some hope and comedy and sweetness, too," and that there is "more to Africa than misery and terror." Traveling alone by cattle truck, "chicken bus," bush train, matatu, rental car, ferry, and even dugout canoe, he tries to blend in as much as possible, buying clothing at secondhand stalls in public markets, carrying only one small bag, and avoiding the tourist destinations. He is an observant and insightful writer, and his descriptions of his travails are so vivid the reader can experience them vicariously. His interviews with residents are perceptive and very revealing of the political and social climate of these places, and his character sketches of Sister Alexandra from Ethiopia (a nun who "has loved") and of two charming Ethiopian traders, a father and son, who take Theroux to the Kenyan border, are delightful. For most of the countries of Africa, however, he has no kind words. Kenya is "one of the most corrupt...countries in Africa," everything in Kampala, Uganda, has changed for the worse, and in Tanzania "there was only decline--simple linear decrepitude, and in some villages collapse." At the U.S. embassy in Malawi, he finds an "overpaid, officious, disingenuous, blame-shifting...embassy hack" and, in pique, he wonders, "Had she, like me, been abused, terrified, stranded, harassed, cheated, bitten, flooded, insulted, exhausted, robbed, browbeaten, poisoned?" Theroux has become curmudgeonly over time, and it is difficult to "travel with" a man who sees himself as a hero for making the trip at all, but who also refuses to give an apple to a little girl when she observes it through the window of his train compartment and begs for it. He is very critical in his comments about other writers. He admires Rimbaud, who lived in Ethiopia in the 1880's, he visits Naguib Mahfouz in Egypt, and he spends his sixtieth birthday with Nadine Gordimer, an old friend. But Hemingway ("bent on proving his manhood"), Isak Dinesen ("a sentimental memoirist"), Kuki Gallman (a "mythomaniac of the present day"), and V.S. Naipaul ("an outsider who feels weak") are abruptly dismissed. When he ultimately refers to his own "safari-as-struggle," it is hard not compare his temporary and voluntary struggles to those of the African people he meets along the way. "Being in Africa was like being on a dark star," he says. His book reflects this darkness.
Rating:
Summary: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town
Review: I have always found Paul Theroux's travel books interesting and this book is no exception. His travels overland from Cairo to Cape Town tell of the rather sad Africa that he encounters. Obviously he has loved Africa - he is revisiting areas where he lived 40 years ago - hoping for improvement and change for the better. What he discovers on his journeys is that such changes don't appear to have happened in the main and it is sad. The country is beautiful but what man has been doing in the towns is another matter resulting in crime, corruption, poverty, fear and hopelessness. Aid workers come and go but the situation appears to remain generally the same. People want to help Africa but how much does Africa need to help itself in order to effect a change? Theroux always paints a vivid picture - of a ragged man walking up a path, an old man on a bike, a woman balancing a bulging bale on her head, an amazing bird on a post, African huts, barefoot kids, tin privies, squalor, cornfields, razor wire, guard dogs - and the reader becomes absorbed in the tale. The book is 500 pages long and is quite absorbing.
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