Dark star safari : overland from cairo to capetown: 9780618446872

from mjspear

Usual Paul Theroux fare: drama on the road (riding a cattle car from Ethiopia to Kenya, hassled by 'urchins' etc.!), chatting with locals, and denouncing "tourists" who like the game animals more than the people of Africa. This book is also a trip back in time to when he served in the Peace Corps...

from hazelk

Towards the end of this book Theroux ponders on how it is that some of the places he'd visited on his trip already seemed familiar: he recognises that Nadine Gordimer's writing had made Johannesburg seem like a city he was returning to as had Mahfouz's work done for him in Egypt. I think Paul The...

from mfeldman51

I love Theroux's writing for its impiety, and this book is no exception. His account of the effect of decades of foreign assistance in Africa is unsparing, particularly as regards Malawi, where he was a Peace Corps volunteer in the sixties. HOW he gets from Cairo to Johannesburg is also pretty in...

from co_coyote

Africa seems almost hopeless to me. I read this book before I traveled there to see for myself. It wasn't as bad as I thought, but nearly. Theroux, though, remains fairly optimistic. Always one to travel the way less traveled, Theroux is my kind of traveler and guide. For understanding a place fr...

from tracyfox

[Dark Star Safari] has generated widely differing reviews. Some people find Theroux's insights into contemporary Africa well-informed and valuable. Others deride him as a constant complainer, arrogant know-it-all and secret hater of all things African. I think both sides have valid points. This i...