Dark Star Safari by Paul Theroux: book review

Dark Star Safari - Overland from Cairo to Cape Town (2002) is a travelogue of Paul Theroux’s travels in continental Africa by rail and road from Cairo, Egypt, in the north to Cape Town, South Africa, in the south. It is 2001 and he is 59 years old and travelling alone.

In 1963, almost 40 years before his travels, he was a teacher in the peace corps, working in Malawi, and a lecturer at Makerere University in Uganda.

In 2001 he wanted to resurrect the wonderful memories he had when he was working in Africa as a young man. In 2001 Theroux travels from Egypt to Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and South Africa.

He has comments such as, ‘’Urban life is nasty all over the world, but it is nastiest in Africa – better a year in Tabora than a day in Nairobi. None of the African cities I had so far seen … seemed fit for human habitation.’’ Well, I am reading his book while I am in Nairobi, and I beg to differ.

I have read two of Theroux’s books: Mosquito Coast (1981) and The Lower River (2012) and enjoyed both of them. However, Dark Star Safari was not enjoyable. It was long, pretentious, annoying, cynical, and rambling. Theroux appears to be just a note-taker in Africa, passing through.

A more adventurous feat was that of 24-year-old Ewart Scott Grogan who, in 1900, walked from Cape Town to Cairo, taking two-and-a-half years, eventually settling in Kenya to live, in a country he loved.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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