Dark Star Safari

"Safari" in Swahili means a journey, typically a long one. In Dark Star Safari, Theroux's itinerary is African, from Cairo to Cape Town—down the Nile, through Sudan and Ethiopia, to Kenya, Uganda and beyond to South Africa. Journeying by train, boat and cattle truck, he passes through some of the most beautiful—and often life-threatening—landscapes on earth.This is travel as discovery, but it is in part a sentimental journey. Almost 40 years ago, Theroux first travelled in Africa as a teacher in the Malawi bush. Now he stops at his old school, sees former students and revisits his African friends. Seeing first-hand what has happened in Africa in those four decades of independence, Theroux is obsessively curious and wittily observant.