Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town - Softcover

Theroux, Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140281118 ISBN 13: 9780140281118

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2003

Synopsis

Paul Theroux sets off for Cape Town from Cairo - the hard way. Traveling across bush and desert, down rivers and across lakes, and through country after country, Theroux visits some of the most beautiful landscapes on earth, and some of the most dangerous. It is a journey of discovery and of rediscovery - of the unknown and the unexpected, but also of people and places he knew as a young and optimistic teacher forty years before. Safari in Swahili simply means 'journey', and this is the ultimate safari. It is Theroux in his element - a trip where chance encounter is everything, where departure and arrival times are an irrelevance, and where contentment can be found balancing on the top of a truck in the middle of nowhere.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

Dark Star Safari is a rich and insightful book whose itinerary is Africa, from Cairo to Cape Town: down the Nile, through Sudan and Ethiopia, to Kenya, Uganda, and ultimately to the tip of South Africa. Going by train, dugout canoe, ?chicken bus,? and cattle truck, Paul Theroux passes through some of the most beautiful ? and often life-threatening ? landscapes on earth.

This is travel as discovery and also, in part, a sentimental journey. Almost forty years ago, Theroux first went to Africa as a teacher in the Malawi bush. Now he stops at his old school, sees former students, revisits his African friends. He finds astonishing, devastating changes wherever he goes. ?Africa is materially more decrepit than it was when I first knew it,? he writes, ?hungrier, poorer, less educated, more pessimistic, more corrupt, and you can?t tell the politicians from the witch doctors.? Africa is an assortment of motley republics and seedy chiefdoms. I got sick, I got stranded, but I was never bored. In fact, my trip was a delight and a revelation.?

About the Author

Paul Theroux has written many works of fiction and travel writing, including the modern classics The Great Railway Bazaar, The Old Patagonian Express, My Secret History and The Mosquito Coast. Paul Theroux divides his time between Cape Cod and the Hawaiian islands.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0140281118
• ISBN 13: 9780140281118
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 512