Swahili for the Broken-hearted (Paperback)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

A week after breaking up with the girl next door - his girlfriend and travelling companion through Central America - Peter Moore heads off to Africa to lose himself for a while. In the grand tradition of 19th-century scoundrels, explorers and romantics, Africa strikes him as the ideal place to find solitude and anonymity in the face of a personal crisis. What follows is Peter's journey from one end of the Dark Continent to the other. Travelling the fabled Cape Town to Cairo route by any means of transport he can blag (or if he must, pay) his way onto, it's an epic trek that sees our intrepid Antipodean experience everything from the southernmost city in Africa to the Pyramids, vast game parks and thundering falls, cosmopolitan cities and tiny villages, as he journeys through the very heart of Africa. And travelling on his own, it's inevitable that Peter falls in with a motley cast of characters and has myriad misadventures: including coming face to face with a wild hyena with very bad breath, crossing the treacherous Sani Pass, the highest in Africa, narrowly escaping a riot by hiding in a coffin shop, saving oil-covered penguins in South Africa, and acting as an extra in a World War II epic, not to mention dodging 20,000 single woman trying to catch the eye of the king of Swaziland during the annual Reed Dance. Oh yes, and then there was the time when he was kicked out of Robert Mugabe's birthday bash at gunpoint.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Bantam Books (May 1, 2003)
• ISBN-10: 0553814524
• ISBN-13: 978-0553814521
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,094,627 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dares to Go Where Others Fear to Tread, March 10, 2006

By	Michael H. Frederick (Gaithersburg, MD USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I'm a recent convert to Peter Moore's books and look forward to reading them all. Please see my review of "The Full Montezuma" for an explanation of how I discovered him and more detail on his writing style.

"Swahili for the Broken Hearted" is a follow-up to "The Full Montezuma." After breaking up with the much ballyhooed GND (Girl Next Door), with whom he roughed it through Central America, Moore undertakes another long and grueling journey. Here he travels overland from Cape Town to Cairo, the fabled route dreamed up by Cecil Rhodes, and pondered by many an armchair adventurer, including yours truly.

To his credit Moore makes it to Cairo but I won't give anything away. In this day and age, politics frequently rears its ugly head, making the romanticized journeys undertaken by the Victorian Brits seem almost quaint. Sudan, in particlar, threatens to intervene with its unsympathetic attitude toward would-be explorers. This worrisome fact causes no end of stress for our story teller.

Along the way, Peter frequently does things in his own inimitable way, taking mini-buses to South African townships (a fact that horrifies his white S.A. friends) and finds himself hitchhiking on a Sunday in Lesotho (not a wise move). He's caught up in violent demonstrations in Ethiopia and suffers aboard long-haul lorries through Kenya's very inhospitable and bandit-ridden northern territory. If you want to know what it's like without having to subject yourself to the torture, this is the book for you.

I really wonder, however, how often Mr. Moore forgoes the pleasures of a night with some of the attractive, and obviously very willing, female backpackers he meets on the road. Come on, Peter, if you hooked up we want to know details! Are you being modest or just a gentleman who's protecting the ladies' reputations?

I read this story on a recent trip to West Africa (an area he doesn't travel through) and it kept me thoroughly entertained through some strenuous days of my own. I even squashed a cockroach on the nightstand of my Dakar hotel room with it and its matte finish wiped off easily, good as new. I e-mailed Peter about this and he responded, saying that he was glad I found additional uses for the book.

Moore comes across as a very nice guy, one who would be fun to run into in a fly-blown African bar or ratty backpackers' hostel, a well-traveled veteran whose brain you could pick over a few beers. I'd recommend this book as an entertaining, easy read; one that you're sorry to see come to an end. As with all good travel narratives, you feel you've taken a journey with a friend and it leaves you looking for more. Fortunately, Peter has several other volumes to choose from. I plan to seek them all out.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars We can Finally Buy his Books in the U.S., March 11, 2006

By	M. Frey (San Jose, Ca USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

It has been several years since I have read Swahili for the Broken Hearted or any of his books for that matter. I was in Singapore and picked up Wrong Way Home. I started reading it on the plane on the way back to the states. It was one of those books that I couldn't put down and laughed out loud.

It was killing me that I couldn't get my hands on any of his other books. I was going to try Amazon U.K. etc, but I travel a lot for my job and thought that I could pick the other books up back in Singapore or somewhere else. I had a heck of a time finding them. I finally found Swahili and Montezuma in a book store in England.

Long story short I really have enjoyed all of Peter Moore's books and am ordering Vroom With a View today.