Explore the African Continent: A Dark Star Safari From Cairo to Cape Town

WS: It took me more than 1.5 years to finish this book, though that’s because I read multiple books at a time. Its a very detailed book, small fonts made it more tedious but some chapters are really interesting. Paul Theroux has achieved a feat by undertaking this unique journey and his storytelling is on point.

India on May 26, 2023

Poindexter: Very well-written by an aging imperialist White Man who complains incessantly about Africans but does NOTHING himself to help out. A truck comes under attack, he criticizes the soldier who shoots back, while he crouches under some blankets. The truck breaks down and instead of helping to fix it, like the other passengers do, he uses his White Privilege to hitch a ride from a fellow Westerner, abandoning the truck people to their own fate. This Theroux fellow sees the world through his own geriatric lens: White 1950s New England. The reader is advised to read Burton and Conrad and Stanley for better and more accurate views of Africa.

Japan on Mar 09, 2023

Hampton Brown: I traveled this African route in the 1970’s and witnessed many of the events that the Dark Star describes. But my travels where twenty years prior. In my case I was doing a soft drink survey for Dixi Cola. After my travels public television had a documentary on the White Nile. I was riveted. Other recommendation: Morehead was mentioned who wrote the White and Blue Nile. In addition Ted Simon wrote Jupiter Travels of his sponsored BSA (Triump) motorcycle trip through Africa in the ‘70s same route that Dark Star took -with the repair challenges and navigation of the route without the civil war. Note: Simon although bitched about his African ventured was bitter after arriving by freighter in South America. South America was a nightmare. Lastly the Author mentioned how Africa has became a welfare Continent enabled by NGO’s dependent — insisting upon reinforcing dependency reinforced by romantic notions of “Out of Africa” , clueless Safari visitors and short term hands off Diplomats. He did mention the missionaries appear the only one making a difference in sustainment. Today Africa is a basket case torn once again over geo power struggles, internal civil warfare, and...

United States on Feb 12, 2023

Erik Peterson: Writing style is as expected, interesting, familiar, and keeps you engaged. I was recovering from extremely bad malaria in a Malawian hospital when reading this. Very enjoyable at the time, and kept me from being bored when I was pretty much bed ridden. It's an easy book to keep reading cover to cover.

Some interesting attitudes about Africa which many would not feel it's PC to relate, but they do ring true (1) the white 4x4 brigade ie overpaid NGO workers such as in the UN, that are completely detached from the communities they purpotedly work for and in reality live a colonial lifestyle (2) the attitude of a S African guy that felt justfied when stealing someone else's land, but felt it was wrong for someone to steal theirs (for example, in Malawi there is a general anti white feeling in many people due to colonialism, but a lack of acceptance that native Malawians were killed and outbred and current Malawians come from S Africa and the Congo ie people just create stories that benefit them and don't necessarily search for logic or truth (3) Malawi is a begging nation. Seriously, I've been on an old bicycle and a begger will run up to me rather than a black guy driving a...

United Kingdom on Dec 27, 2021

Renee C. Ozer: Theroux is a wonderful, pull-no-punches writer, so he doesn't shy away from describing the poverty, maddening inefficiency, corruption, and environmental degradation he sees, contrasting it sadly with the promise he held as a Peace Corps volunteer in the East Africa of the 1960s. He skewers humanitarian workers (whom he views as promoting dependency (recounting a volunteer's reference to a "wet feeding" of Africans), while at the same time driving the latest Safari-worthy SUVs and refusing to give him a ride). Local people crowd under a remaining tree in the hot sun, without anybody taking the initiative to plant some more shade trees. They also allow libraries established in the 1960s to fall into ruins, the books having been stolen long before. However, in the time since the 1960s, the population of the area has more than quadrupled, which you wouldn't learn from this book, which perhaps explains more than the apathy of the local people. I would have liked to see more background on demographic, political, economic, and ecological ravages over the past 50 years that help explain the current situation. I think part of the sourness is Paul Theroux's confrontation with his lost...

United States on May 22, 2019

A. R. V. Riding: Having read nearly all of his travel books, Dark Star is easily his best. Indeed, for me it is one of the best travel books ever written. Paul not only gives a detailed account of his travels and writes superbly with good humour, but also throws in a lot of history, enough to enlighten but not enough to make it more like a history book rather than a travel book as does happen with some travel writers. Paul does not just report on what he sees but he is always asking the question 'why' which is one of the key aspects of any good travel writing. 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. This is not a sanitised view of Africa or a hatchet job, this is writing from an author who clearly loves the continent and its people but who is horrified by how far life has regressed for the ordinary people since he first lived there. Not least because of the disastrous aid culture which has grown up and sapped the will of so many people. No doubt it will be...

United Kingdom on Feb 22, 2012

Caterkiller: I think Paul Theroux expected to find Africa had deteriorated since he last lived there in the 1960s and he is not wrong, so the book has a feeling of being a fait accompli before you have even got very far into it. Having said that, he does raise awareness of some key points regarding the interaction between trade and aid. Firstly if aid projects are a regular occurance in an area then the area becomes economically dependent and there are no incentives for the local populace to improve their own lives: if an aid project is discontinued they can be pretty certain that another will be along shortly to replace it. The "aid business" also loses sight of its aims: they know the project will fail once they have left so lose the will to come up with anything more innovative than spoon-feeding the local population. Aid projects are doomed to fail anyway if the national government doesn't act to reduce corruption and allow businesses and farms to flourish without confiscating any output they make over a subsistence level. (Tim Haford's "Undercover Economist" describes this in more detail). Throughout this book Theroux is pretty angry: he dislikes the western tourists who come on safari...

United Kingdom on Aug 09, 2007

William J. Fickling: Theroux is not everyone's cup of tea. He is opinionated--curmudgeonly is a word very frequently used to describe him--and will often shock readers who expect the usual "cultural relativist" pap with his unflinching willingness to hold the residents of other lands he is writing about accountable for their own inability or unwillingness to assume some sense of responsibility. I have read many of Theroux's books--I have been reading Theroux since he first wrote an article in Esquire in the 1960s about getting kicked out of the Peace Corps--and this is one of his best. He has written many books in the travel narrative genre, and this one is about Africa. I also feel well qualified to comment on the book, since I, like Theroux, was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Africa in the 1960s and, also like Theroux, have many vivid memories of those times.

Theroux set out to take an overland journey from Cairo to Capetown, and to write about it. In doing so he manages, in slightly less than 500 pages, to encapsulate the sad story of the last 40+ years of African history. In many ways, this is a sad, even tragic book. Theroux remembers when Africa was full of hope. Newly freed from the ravages...

United States on Sep 02, 2005