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Summary: Fun Exciting Read That Transports You To Africa!
Review: Africa Solo is a wonderfully compelling book. It is an easy to read narrative of a man who is doing what most of us at one time have thought about doing-exploring! I enjoy travel books because it sends you to locations you've never been. You can feel the desert fever, hear the silence, and taste the sand on your face. It was a great book and I recommend it!
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Summary: Easily captured me, as his journey apparently captured him.
Review: After a trip to Zimbabwe and Botswana recently, I became entranced with Africa. Kevin Kertscher validated my new-found emotional attachment to the continent. His fascination with and acceptance of his experience is easily understood by the reader. And his strong visual sense and training is apparent in his verbal description of his experiences and environment. This is an easy read of a way of life so foreign. I don't know that I would have the wherewithall to travel as he had done, but this book makes me feel as if I had been along with him on his journey.
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Summary: GREAT travel adventure - captures much of the GOOD in Africa
Review: Despite 5 years living in Nigeria, this was the African adventure I couldn't experience with kids and a wife... and I'm not really sure I'd want to experience it myself. But it was a great read, and I was so far up the Congo while on a flight from LA to Houston that I wasn't even aware of the stewardess taking drink orders. I think Kevin captures a very fair cross section of the joys and travails of Africa while not dwelling on the negatives. His contact with the people gave his account a depth and honesty that most people miss. Many were so right on target that I ended up highlighting them in the book for my wife to savor too. Thanks for allowing me to relive some very good feelings and some very good memories through the words of a talented writer.
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Summary: A good, entertaining and informative book
Review: Falling under the wide-ranging scope of travel literature, this entertaining and informative book is based on the author's university thesis. It expands on his experiences during a journey through the African continent in the late 1980s : he visits the countries of Algeria, the Central African Republic, the Congo and Zaire, as well as the Sahara desert. Cars, boats, planes and the author's own two feet were his means of locomotion, meeting interesting people along the way from natives to foreigners like himself. The story he tells is related in a comprehensible style.
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Summary: hm
Review: I actually had the privelidge of meeting the author at a bookstore where he was handing out his john hancock.. I rather scared him I think... but then again I suppose it is odd for an 11 year old to come up to you and start talking about the time she mummified a chicken.. but no matter This book was fairly interesting, and though I don't remember the particulars, his journey through Africa was well described and worth reading if you are interesting in traversing the continent (I don't happen to be interested in doing so- but then again I'm not the traveling sort)
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Summary: Enjoyable account from a traveller, for other travellers
Review: I too could not put this book down. It is very engrossing and it keeps you entertained. I don't see why so many are affected/offended by its simplicity, as I don't think it was ever meant to compete with any in-depth literary accounts (The Little Prince is a simple story, yet still a thoughtful read). It is an honest tale from an innocent, often amusing, perspective. It strikes a particular chord with other travellers though. I have been to Africa but plan on doing a fairly similar, if more extensive, journey through the continent- yet, books like this one are often the only invaluable insight on street-smarts and dealings with locals. Granted it is dated, it still provides bits and glimpses into what these cultures entail. I only wish the author continued his story, with accounts of his explorations in Asia.
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Summary: Vicarious trip through Africa
Review: I was captured from the first page and found I couldn't put the book down. I have been reading as many books on Africa as I can in preparation for my own trip to the continent. Although lacking in the history and current issues facing the various countries the author visited (which have subsequently changed over the past decade) I found Arica Solo to be quite entertaining and educational from the perspective of traveling alone in a land that can still truly be called foreign. The author's trip through Africa was certainly more challenging and exciting than backpacking through Europe. The book lacks the wit of a Bryson, or the detail of Ridgeway, but it creates its own niche in the travel essay genre. Africa Solo is the author's diary cleaned up for readability and full of additioanl reflection during his post-Africa adventure. It is educational in providing anecdotes of situations future adventurers will likely encounter and the solutions that worked for the author. I enjoyed meeting the characters (most of whom would be called eccentric) who came across the author's path on his journey, and the social interaction that occurred. And I couldn't help but appreciate how lucky it is to be born and raised in a country as privileged as America. After finishing the book I was not disappointed, instead craving more, both about Afica and the author's further travels in Pakistan and India.
Rating:
Summary: Vicarious trip through Africa
Review: I was captured from the first page and found I couldn't put the book down. I have been reading as many books on Africa as I can in preparation for my own trip to the continent. Although lacking in the history and current issues facing the various countries the author visited (which have subsequently changed over the past decade) I found Arica Solo to be quite entertaining and educational from the perspective of traveling alone in a land that can still truly be called foreign. The author's trip through Africa was certainly more challenging and exciting than backpacking through Europe. The book lacks the wit of a Bryson, or the detail of Ridgeway, but it creates its own niche in the travel essay genre. Africa Solo is the author's diary cleaned up for readability and full of additioanl reflection during his post-Africa adventure. It is educational in providing anecdotes of situations future adventurers will likely encounter and the solutions that worked for the author. I enjoyed meeting the characters (most of whom would be called eccentric) who came across the author's path on his journey, and the social interaction that occurred. And I couldn't help but appreciate how lucky it is to be born and raised in a country as privileged as America. After finishing the book I was not disappointed, instead craving more, both about Afica and the author's further travels in Pakistan and India.
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Summary: KERTSCHER GOT IT RIGHT!
Review: If you've been there, you'll recognize some of your own fantastic experiences; if you haven't been, READ THIS FIRST.
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Summary: KERTSCHER GOT IT RIGHT!
Review: Kevin Kertscher's Africa Solo is the account of the kind of trek that just cannot be undertaken right now, and so it's worth reading for both its historical and its sociological value. Although it is different from many travel books in that it focuses on individual experience rather than history or events, the book offers a different kind of education: a single person's insight and experience. In the late 1980s, Kertscher trekked - mostly by hitchhiking, with some walking and one plane trip - through West, Central, and East Africa, taking a winding path from Oran in Algeria to Nairobi in Kenya. He also traveled mostly alone, which gave him a lot more exposure to the continent, and put him in more danger as well. An average person like Kertscher probably could not duplicate this trip today; political instability and unrest have rendered many of the countries he visited more dangerous for foreigners, as well as altering the areas through which he traveled significantly since his journey. That change is one of the primary reasons why Kertscher's book is still worth reading - he provides an account of an older Africa the one that gave birth to the current one. His observations of Mobutu's Zaire, while not as detailed as Helen Winternitz's in East Along the Equator, explain a great deal about the current situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And his account of Rwanda during a break in its long history of conflict is surprising - he describes it as one of the most peaceful and progressive countries in Africa. The personal perspective of the book - the author's solo movement through the continent, relying mostly on others for transportation - is also valuable; I got a better sense of the regional differences in the people than I have from other Africa books. Kertscher also experienced much more than most travelers do of the kindness of strangers in Africa; in his sort of travel, he was forced to rely on others, and it impressed me how often those others came through for him. I can't say I'd travel the way he did, but the results were apparently better than I would have expected. All in all, this is an engrossing read that provides a personal perspective on one portion of a very large place. Africa Solo should not be used as a guidebook, because of the many changes in the area, but cultures do change more slowly than governments, so perhaps a person planning a trip to the area would still benefit from this book. Certainly armchair travelers will enjoy it.
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