The Last Train to Zona Verde: My Ultimate African Safari by Paul Theroux

(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $27)

Paul Theroux is “the grumpy old man” of travel writing, said Bo Petersen in the Charleston, S.C., Post and Courier. Never one to romanticize any of the far-flung places he’s visited, the onetime Peace Corps volunteer and sometime novelist instead “drops you smack into the dirt and desires of a land and its people.” This time around, the 72-year-old author of 45 previous books does so again with a portrait of southwest Africa that “has the feel of a coda.” Traveling 2,500 miles through the continent where he began his wanderings five decades ago, Theroux also sounds tired of being discouraged by the sorry sights he’s witnessed across the last six decades. But that doesn’t make his discoveries and observations less than fascinating. “Go on, turn the first few pages. Then I dare you to put it down.”

Theroux proves to be “his delightfully grouchy and incisive self” throughout his trek from Cape Town to northern Angola, said Marie Arana in The Washington Post. At his first stop, he welcomes the sight of sturdy houses replacing shanties, but renounces the vast gulf still separating villa-dwelling white South Africans from the poor black residents of Cape Town’s center. In Namibia, he delights in the chance to fraternize with Ju/’hoansi bushmen before again sinking into complaints about the Africa that’s swallowing up old cultures and glorious landscapes. Last Train undoubtedly becomes “a journey from bliss to sorrow,” but “it’s a journey worth taking”—“at times tragic, often comical, and always gorgeously written.”

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

No one can blame Theroux if he keeps his vow to make the trip his last, said Michael Upchurch in The Seattle Times. As the once-robust American improvises an itinerary by bus, hitchhiked ride, and even elephant, “his own physical discomfort is obvious.” But it’s hard to imagine how he can ever shut off the impulse that inspired him to go see for himself the changes sweeping through southwest Africa. “I didn’t want to be told about this,” he writes. “I wanted to be traveling in the middle of it.”Paul Theroux proves to be “his delightfully grouchy and incisive self” throughout his trek from Cape Town to northern Angola