Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town

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Theroux sets out on his journey hoping for "the picturesque." Does he find it? Talk about his reactions, for instance, to the Sudanese pryamids or the Maltese nun who cooks him a gourmet meal. Who or what else charms him? Also, Paul Theroux demands a lot of attention to himself. He worked as a teacher in Africa (Uganda and Malawi) in the 1960s. Somehow, he thought he would return as the “conquering hero” ��� he informed the U.S. embassy in Malawi that he was willing to give some lectures at a local college – they ignored him – sending the author into another rant about inept, indifferent government officials. At one point Theroux confesses that he is "abused, terrified, stranded, harassed, cheaten, bitten" ... and so on. Do you think he is unnecessarily ill-humored? Or are his complaints justified? Born out of the spirit of open improvisation and the improvisational practice of the immediate live-remix, Dark Star Safari transcends both of these creative processes in a pursuit of fresh approaches to songwriting. Their music is now ready to meet the hearts, minds and bodies of live audiences, to evolve even further through that interaction. I read this a chapter or two chapter at a time over a period of 2 months. It is a book to savor. There are not many books I read again, but this one is on my list.

The more he moves further south the more he mellows. His views about Zimbabwe are positively uplifting, in spite of his recognition of its problems. In South Africa he brilliantly evokes the extreme contrasts - the wealth, culture and wonderful animal life, versus the crime, and the tough life experienced by the poor in squatter camps outside Cape Town. America’s master traveler ( Fresh Air Fiend, 2000, etc.) takes us along on his wanderings in tumultuous bazaars, crowded railway stations, desert oases, and the occasional nicely appointed hotel lobby.But despite such moments this is far from being a gloomy book. Theroux is an ideal sort of traveller: curious, passionate and well-served by his motto of "try anything twice". What's more, he loves Africa; just being there makes his heart swell with pleasure. At the same time he's constantly trying to work out just what has gone wrong. Why is the whole place in such a mess ?" - John Preston, The Telegraph Paul Theroux's books include Dark Star Safari, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Riding the Iron Rooster, The Great Railway Bazaar, The Elephanta Suite, A Dead Hand, The Tao of Travel and The Lower River. The Mosquito Coast and Dr Slaughter have both been made into successful films. Paul Theroux divides his time between Cape Cod and the Hawaiian islands. Read more Details

Malawi is so poor that a person's annual income equals the cost of a meal at an American restaurant.He spends way too much time there,refreshing the memories of his youth.Then,he goes to Mozambique,with its years of civil war and abundance of land mines. Foreshadowing book spoiler: He quotes and draws comparisons from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. A lot. Theroux’s book isn’t a total festival of misanthropy. He visits old friends (he was in the Peace Corp), makes new friends, hangs out with hookers, and generally appreciates the pace, beauty and “otherness” that is Africa.With each mile he takes northwards, the poverty and corruption worsens and Theroux's spirits sink even further. Eventually he reaches Angola, a nation of immense mineral and oil wealth, which is run by a government that is simply "predatory, tyrannical, unjust, utterly uninterested in its people … and indifferent to their destitution and inhuman living conditions". The recent civil war that blighted the country for a decade has denuded it of all its wildlife, infrastructure and hope, Theroux discovers. Tony Bourdain was a wonderful, funny, widely travelled man: the ideal dinner companion, not only a great talker but an attentive listener. He was generous, a great raconteur, in the peak of health, and appeared full of confidence. We talked together for three hours, on camera and off, and I heard no hint of a dark side. In fact, he was one of those people – one of the few I've met – who seemed to live a charmed life: handsome, clever and accomplished, and great-hearted. Learning of Bourdain's suicide, I thought of Henry James who once said, “Never say you know the last word about any human heart.” In 2001 Paul Theroux returned to Africa and traveled from Cairo to Capetown at age sixty. Thirty four years earlier he had taught in Uganda, where he worked with V S Naipaul, later to become Nobel Laureate. Since then Theroux gained fame and fortune as a novelist and travel writer. This was his middle travel period. He had begun in 1973 with 'The Great Railway Bazaar' and was still at it in 2018.

Theroux also visits small, crowded Malawi, where he first taught, and finds a place where there still isn't a surgeon in the whole northern half of the country. Dark Star Safari, a newly formed group featuring Jan Bang, Erik Honoré, Eivind Aarset and Samuel Rohrer present its eponymous recording debut, an evocative song-driven album. These songs conjure shadows of memory, clouds of dreaming and silhouettes of foreboding through the album’s layered, many-textured fabrics and Jan Bang's silken delivery of Erik Honoré's acute lyrics. So far the Theroux travel books have been engaging enough to want to continue reading them – a decent mix of humor, history and bumpy rides. Dark Star Safari is the work of four kindred spirits, their open modus operandi, and a remarkably interconnected creative nerve system. Key to their collaboration is an organic freedom that enables the music “to fill itself in", to be self-actualizing via the musicians as medium. The music of the 10 songs resulted from a two-stage process: an initial phase of free flowing open improvisation, and a subsequent exploratory phase where hidden potentials were discovered and nurtured.

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I also didn’t give a … about this soft-core porn book (he called it erotic) that he was writing and referring too. En route to Kampala the countryside looks better but the political violence persists. The city and Makerere University were his home in 1965. In the years since Idi Amin things fell apart. Theroux recalls Naipaul's fear of Africa. This trip seems to support that aversion. He meets an old friend, now Prime Minister. Dodging an ebola outbreak he books passage to Tanzania on a vintage colonial steamship. Always a terrific teller of tales and conjurer of exotic locales, he writes lean prose that lopes along at a compelling pace' Sunday Times Q: I'm cut up about a man of such empathy and contribution being gone. Can you tell us about your Hawaii lunch with Tony Bourdain on Parts Unknown ?