Customer Reviews

Tourist in Africa

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Briefly, readers keen on African travel anecdotes, and on Waugh's particularly keen social observation, will enjoy this book. It starts off stiffly, with Waugh in England, but you would do well to get beyond his haughtiness - throughout the book he continues to surprise pleasantly - at times, on senses, despite himself. This is essentially a travel piece, written in somewhat conversational style, in which Waugh both describes a voyage from the UK, through the Suez Canal, and along the East African coast to South Africa and his perspectives on the voyage and his fellow passangers. He is entertained along the way, particularly in Kenya and Zanzibar, and otherwise entertains himself - and us, his readers along for the ride. There are interesting references to the 'Happy Valley' crowd of the Kenyan Highlands, among whom Waugh played. This book is up there with other great travel narratives and naturalist perspectives: DH Lawrences' "The Sea and Sardinia", Andre Gide's "Travels in the Congo", and Graham Greene's travel work ("Journey Without Maps", and his novel "Travels With My Aunt"). Whether the book has great literary merit is for others to decide - it is entertaining, human, and describes an area (Africa) and an epoch (post-colonial) through the eyes of one of the century's most visceral - if haughty - writers. Includes insight into what it is like to travel single and long in years. I recommend "A Tourist in Africa".

ericwiberg@worldnet.att.net

In 1958 Evelyn Waugh went on a trip to Africa during the winter months and then wrote A Tourist in Africa about his journey there to Kenya, Tanganyika, Rhodesia and South Africa. Waugh style is leisurely and sedate and always proper.
He is not interested in the animals as most tourist would be but in the people, mostly colonists and ancient architecture.

A Tourist in Africa provides insight into the Africa of colonial times in many ways they seem better functioning than modern Africa with its wars, genocide and decay roads and railways, but then again we wouldn't have this modern Africa without colonialism.

I admire his devotion to his English roots as he derides the colonials for abandoning their dignity for comfort:

"During the day the officials, who are the main white population, wear white shorts and open shirts, looking like grotesquely overgrown little boys who have not yet qualified for the first eleven at their private schools. Those who wish to add a touch of dandyism to this unimposing uniform sport monocles. I wonder how much the loss of European prestige in hot countries is connected with the craven preference for comfort over dignity."

It is interesting to read a perspective from the 1950's and perhaps a little jarring as well, but I will leave that to the reader to decide.

Each winter, after Childermas, Evelyn escaped from the rigors and his horror of the English winter. In 1985 he undertook a trip to the "British Africa" of Kenya, Rhodesia and Tanganyika returning in April.

Oh that he took a longer trip and more time. Oh too, that he shared more details of his pleasant and "not too arduous" journey. Now it is too late for us to learn more, those countries are - as he knew and saw them - gone.

Often considered arrogant and a snob, Waugh was a thorough conservative well aware of the system of class divisions and secure in his standing in them. Philip Larkin, in a review for The Guardian critiqued Waugh's elitism; "to receive a letter from him, it seems one would have to have a nursery nickname and be a member of White's"! But there was a strong core of honor and courage in his character that is apparent in his treatment of his characters, his self-mockery and his wit. His writing is stylish and clear.

Evelyn enjoyed this trip very much but is said to have "despised" the book and it was in fact, his last travel narrative, a genre at which I feel he excelled. I enjoyed this book very much and was sad to finish it so quickly...Cyril Connolly, a friend that Waugh loved to tease, in a review called it "the thinnest piece of book-making that Mr. Waugh has undertaken".

But, unlike me, it was not the physical size or length he was criticizing!