In discussing the disease growth of African cities, Theroux demonstrates how a traveler's finely wrought observations of people and landscape sometimes offer the best political and social analysis. Appalled by ''the filth, the dirt, the litter,'' beset by ''fungal infections, petty extortion, mocking lepers, dreary bedrooms, bad food, exploding bowels,'' Theroux narrates a Job-like ordeal during which he is ''abused, terrified, stranded, harassed, cheated, bitten, flooded, insulted, exhausted, robbed, lied to, browbeaten, poisoned, stunk up and starved. Found this article which, while reviewing The Last Train to Zona Verde: My Ultimate African Safari, might as well have been reviewing this book. At times, he goes out of his way to satisfy some perverse curmudgeonly desire to pick theological disputes with Christian missionaries.

He spent time in Malawi in the Peace Corps, and as a teacher in Uganda, so has some comparisons to make there. Finance is provided by PayPal Credit (a trading name of PayPal UK Ltd, Whittaker House, Whittaker Avenue, Richmond-Upon-Thames, Surrey, United Kingdom, TW9 1EH). Throughout the remainder of his account of his trip we are reminded of the uselessness of aid workers and, in particular, the offensive luxury of the vehicles they drive around in.His novels include The Bad Angel Brothers, The Lower River, Jungle Lovers, and The Mosquito Coast, and his renowned travel books include Ghost Train to the Eastern Star and Dark Star Safari. Early on Theroux mentions reading Conrad's Heart of Darness -- "which I was to read twelve more times before I reached Cape Town" -- but it's not a guiding text for most of the book.

Most of these vehicles are in a decrepit state – and likely would not be allowed on roads in a First World country.A genius of the witty insult -- ''At my lowest point, when things were at their most desperate and uncomfortable, I always found myself in the company of Australians, who were like a reminder that I'd touched bottom'' -- Theroux regales us with the humor of ill humor, maintaining a tricky balance of crankiness, curiosity and charm. I supposed that for some people this looked like the past, but to me it had the haunted look of a desperate distant future, an intimation of how the world would end, the Third World luxury resorts turned into squatters’ camps.