Although tired, his role as a famous writer working in his home and office at the next award-winning book, Paul Theroux can not wait to get to a fax, internet and mobile phones. He met his wife while teaching in Africa forty years ago, he has history. What he finds on his return is that things are changing, while some things never.

In tracing his footsteps as a young man in Africa, the experience Theroux "You can go Home Again" syndrome. One: As a teacher in hisTheroux is in the twenties of the Peace Corps in Malawi kicked out for good policy. Two: Forty years later, "You Can not Go Home Again", not to Africa.

If the reader can see on the lookout for tips on the best way to Africa, do not read this book. For the game parks, safari camps and the likes of Victoria Falls, I suggest, Frommer's travel books, Lonely Planet and travel agents. You will be comfortably from one place to the next, without having to worry and abducteddirty. For those who know what really lies in this heart of darkness, you see it through the eyes of Paul Theroux want.

A consummate adventurer and prolific writer of fiction and non-fiction, Theroux is always the pragmatist, also know the dangers of an American in Africa alone. But his knowledge of the continent gives it a leg. His "Dark Star Safari" is funny travel books that the reader on a bumpy, Sentimental Journey from Cairo to Cape Town to the north leads toSouth meet and greet him with anyone else on the road. His fellow passengers are also chickens, goats and pigs latin-speaking guides with light fingers in his pockets and a charming curiosity Americans.

Beginning of his journey in dusty brown Egyptian capital, Cairo, Theroux waiting endlessly for a visa for Sudan. A questionable expert tells him there Nubian pyramids bigger, bigger, more beautiful and intact as he looks, on horseback inGiza. After wading through bureaucratic corn, he finally has the permission for the Nubian land of Sudan, where he runs into a beat of the never-ending surprises in Africa to leave. Not only are these the Nile, and numerous monuments are incredibly well preserved, they are a combination of Nubian and Egyptian creativity surpasses the pyramids in Egypt.

A copious note taker and researchers Theroux leave anything to memory. He knows he has a publisher, and he is in no hurry. So mostthe great crowded cities back, he pulls wound, stopping when it suits him, or where the bus breaks down. His man-to stay in-the-bush style that makes it unique and one of the few travel writers like him, like Peter Matthiessen. Theroux has a hard road behind him and he is sick many times. His reunion with old friends in grass huts and villages of Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, all the way down to where the southern tip of Africa meets the treacherous Cape of GoodHope to be meticulously recorded so that he can write about them a year later, as if they had just happened. His personal experiences with the people, politics and poverty in Africa are illuminating, and often tragic.

Theroux loves the bush. He returned to Malawi to see the school where he taught and renew old friendships with former students. He thinks that's gone, as elsewhere on the continent, Malawi rust, a result of too much help and not enough do-it-yourself. There areExceptions. But most of Africa is still ridden with poverty and disease by forty years ago, only worse, because Africa was killed with kindness by the aid-givers. The sultry-meaning old days have come loose, so that an erosion of the spirit and less educated people listless with empty stomach.

Some students of Peace Corps volunteers who had the good fortune went to Harvard and Oxford. They returned to their countries can only result in the malaise of greed and are suckedCorruption that Africa is today. The natural resources in Africa, such as gold, diamonds, animals, and plain old splendor is breathtaking, for the benefit of all Africans are used with the exception. And can the whole world about Africa today is to try to more people die in the face of the leaders to keep no matter.

Theroux obsess over the details, and that's what makes this book as an eye-opening and needed to read.

Paul Theroux's novel "Mosquito Coast" was ina film.