A Tourist in Africa

Evelyn Waugh

 

Synopsis

Timing is everything, and in this brilliant travel diary Evelyn Waugh catches Africa and the Levant as it was emerging from the shadow of WW II and into the post- colonial order. He reports on Port Said, Aden, Kenya, Mt. Kilimanjaro, Tanganyika, Rhodesia, Mozambique, Bechuanaland and South Africa. Waugh was no defender of the established order, but he was no sucker for hype, either. He knew the emergers were going to get something far different from what they expected.

Review

Perhaps only Evelyn Waugh could get away with such a blatant piece of book-making as this. Two winters ago he fled from sleet and fog to a liner which took him to Dar-es-Salaam in Tanganyika. Here he disembarked and proceeded by road and air to Rhodesia, where he stayed with friends before catching another liner home from Cape Town. It was a two-months holiday spent in casual progress along the beaten track, now and then jotting down notes in a diary in search of sunshine, warmth and travel, with no interest whatever in politics, social revolution, cold wars or any other aspect of the famous hurricane of change. - Elspeth Huxley, The New York Times

Author

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) was a British writer, journalist and reviewer, generally considered as one of the leading English prose writers of the 20th century.