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Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Capetown | 
 enlarge | Author: Paul Theroux
Publisher: Mariner Books
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
Buy New: $6.50
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Avg. Customer Rating:  65 reviews
Sales Rank: 21907
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 496
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.8
ISBN: 0618446877
Dewey Decimal Number: 916.04329
EAN: 9780618446872
ASIN: 0618446877
Publication Date: April 5, 2004
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Product Description
In Dark Star Safari the wittily observant and endearingly irascible Paul Theroux takes readers the length of Africa by rattletrap bus, dugout canoe, cattle truck, armed convoy, ferry, and train. In the course of his epic and enlightening journey, he endures danger, delay, and dismaying circumstances. Gauging the state of affairs, he talks to Africans, aid workers, missionaries, and tourists. What results is an insightful meditation on the history, politics, and beauty of Africa and its people, and "a vivid portrayal of the secret sweetness, the hidden vitality, and the long-patient hope that lies just beneath the surface" (Rocky Mountain News). In a new postscript, Theroux recounts the dramatic events of a return to Africa to visit Zimbabwe.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 60 more reviews...
 It doesn't get more real than this. July 28, 2008
I've loved every travel book that Paul Theroux has ever written. This is no exception. Wonderfully colorful writing. Given a thirty to forty year perspective, it has real impact. Buy it, get it at the library, but read it.
Travelogue from a sour-minded writer June 19, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I think I know why Theroux wrote such a whining book about his trip. I have enjoyed thoroughly his other travel books, Iron Rooster, Patagonian Express, etc, but this one...! His constant assertion that aid workers, missionaries, volunteer educators are doing more harm than good gets old quickly, whether one agrees or not. Strange, as he had been one himself in Malawi in the '60s. Repeatedly, he tells us that he is seeing things that tourists (bad word) flying into the airport never see. In Mbenga, the volunteer aid workers had the best rooms! He heard a couple say the word "Paul," and he thought Oh No, he was recognized as a famous writer, and was miffed to find that they were speaking of another writer, the lesser Paul who wrote part of the New Testament. There are too many generalized statements: "Every structure in Africa was in a state of deterioration." (p. 225) Again and again we read of his encounters with delicious looking young prostitutes and of their pleading with him for business, but his virtue remains intact. And at least twenty times along the way we read of his return to writing his "erotic novella." Straining all this out, his travels are both courageous and interesting, and I think I know why he was so negative in his writing. His last week in Africa, his beloved bag with artifacts and passport and money and radio is stolen, and worse, he gets a severe case of the diarretic squirts. The latter stays with him for months after his return home, all during the writing of the book. Had these two unfortunate events not happened the very last days of his great journey, I think we would have been able to read a more pleasant, and I suspect more realistic, account of his travels.
One of his best. May 2, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Consider what it is like to live with an exceptionally well-developed appreciation of your own flimsy mortality and insignificant standing in this strange and dangerous place we call the universe. Throw in a morbid and febrile imagination prone to generating 'what is the worst that can happen' scenarios, as well as a horror and fear of insects and parasites of all kinds, and you will not be surprised to learn that I prefer to do most of my travelling by book from the comfort of my favourite armchair, to the strains of my favourite ECM cds, within sight of a purring cat, or perhaps a blizzard or sunset out my front window. The authors I most like to travel with in books are Paul Bowles, Redmond O'Hanlon and Paul Theroux.
Prior to 'Dark Star Safari', I had read 'The Happy Isles of Oceania', 'Riding the Iron Rooster', and 'The Pillars of Hercules', all of which I enjoyed immensely. There is so much in a Theroux travel book. As you travel through an area with the author you get levels of fascinating history, sometimes through the eyes of famous prior travellers, such as, in this book, Flaubert and Rimbaud -so you come away learning much about them that you didn't know, plus getting the benefit of the historical comparison in settings. And things certainly have changed a lot in Africa from colonial times to now.
Theroux's comments about other travellers are always entertaining and frequently edifying, p.35,
'Wealthy people too lazy to read love cruises for the anecdotal history and archeological chats, which they use to one-up their listeners in boasting bouts after they go home. The Nile cruise passenger is someone in the process of becoming a licensed bore.'
I love the picky little details he will give at times about people who get on his nerves. These people would bother me too. Take these two encountered on a bus from Nelpruit, South Africa, to Maputo, Mozambique, p. 318,
'Two Indian men in skullcaps hogged the four seats in the front row of the top level. The men had pulled off their shoes and sat cross-legged, and the pong of their cheesy feet filled the upper deck.'
There is such variety is this book. Variety in mode of travel, from river cruise to dugout boat, from chicken bus to air-conditioned coach showing movies, from sheep truck to luxury train. Theroux only had to take a plane once on his entire journey, and that was because there was absolutely no other way of getting out of Sudan and continuing on his way. Some of Theroux's modes of travel go beyond risky to being frankly dangerous.
This is a grim book in parts, but then Africa is a grim continent. We only have to consult the headlines, which Theroux satirizes throughout the book, headlines like -'Hundreds Drown in Ferry Disaster', 'Hundreds Die As Soldiers Riot', and that favourite signoff of grim faced cable news reporters, 'And These Are the Lucky Ones.' Today, as I write this review, the headline is 'Nine Die In Luxury Bus Crash In Egypt'. There are long-term crises, imminent crises threatening to boil over, and immediate crises calling for emergency aid. Africa doesn't seem to be working, and reading this book you get an idea of why.
Theroux, with his lifetime of exotic travel experience, his top drawer literary connections, his political connections, his scholar's knowledge of history, geography and biology, and his overall drive, smarts, and lust for life, has offered up a special treat in 'Dark Star Safari', the sort of miraculous concoction I doubt that anyone else is capable of. What other book allows you to spend time with Naguib Mahfouz and Nadime Gordimer, feed hyenas at night on the outskirts of Harar, get shot at on a lawless road in Northern Kenya, visit spectacular Egyptian ruins with platoons of other tourists or alone far off in the deadly desert, debate with obnoxious evangelists (Africa is thick with them and Theroux can talk rings around them), reminisce with the Prime Minister of Uganda, take a cruise across Lake Victoria, fraternize with a myriad of wonderful, exotic wildlife, and travel the length of beautiful, dangerous Africa, top to bottom, the hard way, all the while meeting innumerable interesting characters, and hearing their stories, under impromptu, usually uncomfortable circumstances? Highly recommended.
Nkosi Sikelele Africa January 25, 2008
I read this book while driving from Johannesburg to the equator and back. It was therefor very immediate for me. I normally find Paul Theroux a bit tedious but certainly not this one. His desciptions are compelling and he brings to life all the awful, sad things about Africa. I fear that this beautiful continent, with it's wonderful people will never be able to overcome their problems.
dis goode and bitter book, mon November 14, 2007
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
mon, dat Paul Theroux--he like de old friend commin to your door after longtime and you be wonderin "which one showed up, mon--de Jekyll or de Hyde?" de Jekyll, oh my stars, mon, he be de followin: bitter, cantankerous, unforgivin, ruthless in he shrewd assessments, mon, of de characters of de characters (all over de world, not just de Africa) he meets and not so much interviews but interrogates. nothin escape dis Jekyll's scrutiny. no wonder he such long long friends wich de nasty but brilliant V.S. Naipaul--annodder writer you need read, methinks.
however, mon, de Mr. Hyde in de Mr. Paul, he be a poet of de first water, mon--de flights of he prose soar de stratosphere: descriptions of de sunsets, de trenchant perceptions about world aid to Africa, his sensa humour, mon--i like to smoke one blunt wich dis guy, mon.
but he a dangerous guide; you have he cadences in your pumpkin-noggin for de LONG time. like de words of dat ticklish-pricklish friend i tell you about.
you mun go read de Theroux, mon. read anyting by he. but dis be one de best of a very heavy canon.
peace, mon.
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