REVIEWS
Literary Passport Books
Sometimes, travel literature simply doesn’ t convey the thrill and romance of travelling. Where to go for a cheap dinner, the address of the bus station and local expressions may be useful but you can’ t really lose yourself in travel guides. These books will swing your mood from practical to poetic.
Wilfred Thesiger: Arabian Sands * Middle East: Descriptions of two postwar( 1945-50) journeys that set out in the Middle East to explore the harsh life of camel-breeding tribesmen and Bedouins in‘ the Empty Quarter’. The book is an exploration of living with a different culture and overcoming Western attitudes. Penguin / £ 8.96
Paul Theroux: The Great Railway Bazaar * Europe-Orient-India: American novelist Theroux narrates his four-month long train journey from Europe to Asia in 1975. Accounts of the Indian hippie trail and trans-Syberian railway are very entertaining. In 2006, Theroux went back on the route to write Ghost on the Eastern Star. Penguin Modern Classics / £ 7.
Jon Krakauer: Into the Wild * USA: This 1996 non-fiction book explores the journey of Chris McCandless, who hitchhikes to the Stampede Trail in Alaska. He settles in an abandoned bus in the wilderness and draws inspiration from naturalist and transcendental writers. An adaption of his ascetic lifestyle was portrayed Sean Penn’ s 2007 movie. Paperback / £ 5.48
George Orwell: Homage to Catalonia * Spain: Orwell’ s personal account and political critique of the Spanish Civil War in 1938. His writing resonates with much of the pan-European socialist movement. He employs humour and wit and the book carries a scent of Orwell’ s commitment to honesty. Penguin Classics / £ 6.69
Robert Byron: The Road to Oxiana * Iran / Afghanistan: An intriguing account of Byron’ s journey to Persia and Afghanistan( 1933 / 34). Political reflections, observations of Byzantine art and rhythmic prose make this work an aesthete’ s bible. Penguin Classics / £ 6.89
// Elisabeth Doehne
Paul Theroux: The Last Train to Zone Verde: Overland from Cape Town to Angola It is Death, rather than Paul Theroux himself, who takes the role of the protagonist in the American travel writer’ s latest book, The Last Train to Zona Verde.
The journey through South Africa, Namibia and into Angola, exposes not merely the approaching death of Theroux, but the death of Africa as he knew it.“ I suspected that this trip would be in the nature of the farewell,” he writes.
The book reads like a resigned farewell- a defeated romanticist leaving the ruins of his dreams in a mixture of disillusionment and sympathy.
Theroux sets out from Cape Town,“ a city like an amphitheatre,” where he quarrels with himself over the astonishing wealth and deprivation and the perverseness of township tourism. He travels overland to Namibia, encountering“ another African city, another horror, more chaos.”
In Namibia he looks for and finds the Ju /’ hoansi people- traditional bushmen finally an Africa untouched by modernity! Only then does he find that his“ bliss bordering rapture, was the result of witnessing a re-enactment”. The Africa of Theroux’ s dreams is dead. In Angola things only get worse.
The Last Train to Zona Verde reads like an afterthought, a recollection of a long-gone journey, written by an old man looking back on his own ignorance, aware of how his fantasies of authentic Africa blurred his experience. He writes in a reflective tone, one of knowledge and experience, making for a fascinating, informative, if not exactly uplifting, read.
Theroux concludes:“ I began my travelling life hoping to find differences in landscapes and people, not repeated versions of the metropolitan experience.”
// Jakob Jessen
38