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The Last Train to Zona Verde Paperback – Illustrated, May 13, 2014
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Paul Theroux’s best-selling Dark Star Safari chronicled his epic overland voyage from Cairo to Cape Town, providing an insider’s look at modern Africa. Now, with The Last Train to Zona Verde, he returns to discover how both he and Africa have changed in the ensuing years.
Traveling alone, Theroux sets out from Cape Town, going north through South Africa, Namibia, then into Angola, encountering a world increasingly removed from tourists’ itineraries and the hopes of postcolonial independence movements. After covering nearly 2,500 arduous miles, he cuts short his journey, a decision he chronicles with unsparing honesty in a chapter titled “What Am I Doing Here?” Vivid, witty, and beautifully evocative, The Last Train to Zona Verde is a fitting final African adventure from the writer whose gimlet eye and effortless prose have brought the world to generations of readers.
"Everything is under scrutiny in Paul Theroux’s latest travel book—not just the people, landscapes and sociopolitical realities of the countries he visits, but his own motivations for going where he goes . . . His readers can only be grateful." — Seattle Times
“If this book is proof, age has not slowed Theroux or encouraged him to rest on his achievements . . . Gutsy, alert to Africa's struggles, its injustices and history.” — San Francisco Chronicle
- Print length368 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherMariner Books
- Publication dateMay 13, 2014
- Dimensions5.31 x 1 x 8 inches
- ISBN-10054422793X
- ISBN-13978-0544227934
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Thoroughly engrossing—from Cape Town to Namibia to the Okavango Delta, Theroux is his inimitable, delightfully grouchy and incisive self…At times tragic, often comical and always gorgeously written, this is a paean to a continent, by a writer unafraid to give it some tough love." —Washington Post "He has no illusions about the fact that he is just a passing visitor (a privileged one at that), but that doesn't make his observations, or exquisite writing, any less engaging." —Entertainment Weekly (Best Book of the Year) "Theroux is at his best when he tells their stories, happy and sad...Theroux’s great mission had always been to transport us beyond that reading chair, to challenge himself—and thus, to challenge us." —Boston Globe "If this book is proof, age has not slowed Theroux or encouraged him to rest on his achievements…Gutsy, alert to Africa's struggles, its injustices and history." —San Francisco Chronicle "Everything is under scrutiny in Paul Theroux’s latest travel book—not just the people, landscapes and sociopolitical realities of the countries he visits, but his own motivations for going where he goes…His readers can only be grateful." —Seattle Times "A rich story often laced with irony, the work of a keen observer, full of colorful encounters…Ever the astute questioner, ever the curious reporter, ever a forthright witness to history and the dilemma of the oppressed, alert to political thuggery, he chronicles the crises facing the sub-Sahara." —New York Journal of Books "Theroux takes you on a rocky safari across infringed wilds, disenfranchised poverty and coven luxury. He introduces you to a boil of angry indigenous peoples and unsettled migrants you won’t meet on an itinerary tour....Go on, turn the first few pages. Then I dare you to put it down." —Charleston Post-Courier "As in the best of his many books, Theroux convincingly takes you along for every manic bus ride. His wonderment is yours, whether he’s contemplating eating a flyblown leg of chicken, dealing with a ferocious Angolan border guard, or deciding that this time, he’s had quite enough. It’s a remarkable, teeth-gritting tale" —Everett Potter "His ability to map new terrain, both interior and exterior, and to report from places that seldom make the news, remains undiminished." —Booklist ( starred review) "Theroux’s prose is as vividly descriptive and atmospheric as ever and, though a bit curmudgeonly, he’s still wide open to raw, painful interactions between his psyche and his surroundings." —Publishers Weekly (starred review) "In this intensely personal book, Theroux honestly confronts racism, stigma, privilege and expectations...Reading this enlightening book won’t only open a window into Theroux’s mind, it will also impart a deeper understanding of Africa and travel in general." —Kirkus (starred review) —
From the Back Cover
A decade ago, Paul Theroux’s best-selling Dark Star Safari chronicled his epic overland voyage from Cairo to Cape Town, providing an insider’s look at modern Africa. Now, with The Last Train to Zona Verde, he returns to discover how both he and Africa have changed in the ensuing years.
Traveling alone, Theroux sets out from Cape Town, going north through South Africa, Namibia, then into Angola, encountering a world increasingly removed from tourists’ itineraries and the hopes of postcolonial independence movements. After covering nearly 2,500 arduous miles, he cuts short his journey, a decision he chronicles with unsparing honesty in a chapter titled “What Am I Doing Here?” Vivid, witty, and beautifully evocative, The Last Train to Zona Verde is a fitting final African adventure from the writer whose gimlet eye and effortless prose have brought the world to generations of readers.
"Everything is under scrutiny in Paul Theroux’s latest travel book—not just the people, landscapes and sociopolitical realities of the countries he visits, but his own motivations for going where he goes . . . His readers can only be grateful." — Seattle Times
“If this book is proof, age has not slowed Theroux or encouraged him to rest on his achievements . . . Gutsy, alert to Africa's struggles, its injustices and history.” — San Francisco Chronicle
[AU PHOTO] PAUL THEROUX’s renowned travel books include Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Dark Star Safari, and The Great Railway Bazaar. His acclaimed novels include The Mosquito Coast, Hotel Honolulu, and The Lower River.
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Mariner Books; Reprint edition (May 13, 2014)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 368 pages
- ISBN-10 : 054422793X
- ISBN-13 : 978-0544227934
- Item Weight : 10.4 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.31 x 1 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #708,240 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #409 in General Africa Travel Books
- #1,288 in Travel Writing Reference
- #2,180 in Travelogues & Travel Essays
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Paul Theroux was born and educated in the United States. After graduating from university in 1963, he travelled first to Italy and then to Africa, where he worked as a Peace Corps teacher at a bush school in Malawi, and as a lecturer at Makerere University in Uganda. In 1968 he joined the University of Singapore and taught in the Department of English for three years. Throughout this time he was publishing short stories and journalism, and wrote a number of novels. Among these were Fong and the Indians, Girls at Play and Jungle Lovers, all of which appear in one volume, On the Edge of the Great Rift (Penguin, 1996).
In the early 1970s Paul Theroux moved with his wife and two children to Dorset, where he wrote Saint Jack, and then on to London. He was a resident in Britain for a total of seventeen years. In this time he wrote a dozen volumes of highly praised fiction and a number of successful travel books, from which a selection of writings were taken to compile his book Travelling the World (Penguin, 1992). Paul Theroux has now returned to the United States, but he continues to travel widely.
Paul Theroux's many books include Picture Palace, which won the 1978 Whitbread Literary Award; The Mosquito Coast, which was the 1981 Yorkshire Post Novel of the Year and joint winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was also made into a feature film; Riding the Iron Rooster, which won the 1988 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award; The Pillars of Hercules, shortlisted for the 1996 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award; My Other Life: A Novel, Kowloon Tong, Sir Vidia's Shadow, Fresh-air Fiend and Hotel Honolulu. Blindness is his latest novel. Most of his books are published by Penguin.
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There was no train - ever. There was really no "Zona Verde" (the Bush) any more at the geographical point where he was when he felt the "beckoning home".
So after more than forty years of travel, more than forty years of telling us in some of the finest writing of any genre about what he has seen and where he has been, this book is his valedictory. And we shall miss him. Yes, he could be difficult, picky, opinionated, sulky at times, but he was an optimist - always was looking ahead, always ready for the next trip. He had an eye and an appreciation for beauty in the earth and goodness in its people. He could always see, sense, discern and tell us what lay beneath the surface; and he had no patience for cant, the false, the fake or the fatuous. He always traveled alone, unscheduled; he traveled with the ordinary travelers of whatever country he was in as his companions. No tours, no fancy stuff for him. And he was sentimental, a loving man. He loved trains. If one was available he would be on it. Above all he was (this is starting to read like an obituary!) - and is - a man of letters. In nearly every country he would take time out to conduct classes in English literature and composition; and, in reading all of his travel books, I was constantly amazed to learn that he always seemed to have with him some out-of-the-way book specifically relevant to where he was. He was a traveling reference room!
Not only is he a man of letters, I think his heart is in teaching. That's how he started out fifty years ago - as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching English in Malawi and Uganda - and I think an argument can be made that at least a part of his his heart has always been in Africa. When he made his trip ten years ago down the East Coast of Africa which was the basis for his Dark Star Safari he stopped again to teach at the school which had seen his first efforts; and he has frequently alluded to this happy period in his writings. So when his trip into Angola crashed and burned, when he saw and experienced nothing but chaos, poverty, trash, hunger and desuetude in the societal and governmental and economic train wreck that is now Angola I think a case can be made to he effect that he just said "enough". It was looking like an old friend who had fallen on hard times, drunk too much, lived it up (and now down) and had reached bottom. There was nothing there - for Mr. Theroux or any of his readers.
This really being a book review I should say something about the trip into Angola. It was a trip into "the Africa of cheap, despised, unaccommodated people of seemingly unfixable blight, so hideous, really, it is unrecognizable as Africa at all. But it is, of course - the new Africa. ... Angolans lived among garbage heaps - plastic bottles, soda cans, torn bags, broken chairs, dead dogs, rotting food, indefinable slop, their own scattered twists of excrement - and in one town a stack of dead cows, bloated from putrefaction" (p.297)
Angola has a problem - or problems - typical of a majority of African countries - poverty, disease, hunger, corruption, lack of infrastructure, lack of education and, above all the lack of a tradition of stable government. As an example, Angola was for Portugal the dumping ground of its underclass for four hundred years, never a country to be "developed" in the conventional sense but one to be pillaged; and I don't think anybody ever gave it a thought. Following a domestic revolution in Portugal in 1972 Angola achieved "independence" only to be thrust into a Civil War waged between three local and independent forces, two of which were supported by foreign powers. That, Civil War lasted more than 25 years. Nobody "won'. It left the country infested with land mines and disease. It broke apart whatever chances the natives had of maintain their traditional existence in the Bush and brought them into the cities which have expanded exponentially with grim poverty and grimmer futures for all. The game has gone from the Bush. There is no tourist industry. Nobody comes to Angola - and for good reason. There is nothing to see any more, nobody really interesting to talk to, no "natives" to gawk at. They are all in town in the slums trying to exist.
If you think this is a dystopian view of present day Angola you a right, but this is what Mr. Theroux walked into (and I mean this literally - he had to walk across the border.)
Only a master craftsman like Theroux could describe it accurately. But he has done it and done it well.
Bottom line. The book is a real downer of a travel tale because of the subject matter. The upside: Paul Theroux is, I think, the best, the most eloquent, the most insightful, most descriptive writer working today; and if for on other reason than to enjoy and envy his use of the written word, his last travel book is worth reading.
I believe I have read every non-fiction book ever written by Theroux (but none of his fiction), and this book finds the author 70 years old and tiring of seeing Africa never really change other than to deteriorate. He has lived in Africa and written a number of travel books through the years. This book comments on his latest travels in 4 countries - South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Angola.
I have several favorite things about Theroux's travel books. First of all, he travels alone which allows him to interact deeply with people in the areas where he is travelling. I find nothing worse in a travel book than some author's experience with his friend and seatmate while the place they are travelling in goes whinging by without comment. If I wanted inane conversation with a mildly inebriated buddy, I'd hang out at a local bar.
Second, Theroux walks the walk; he's been there and spent time with locals. Third, he asks the locals tough questions and sometimes is even honest with them. It's a fine line between offending some native by telling him how ugly and nasty his country is (even though he has just told you the same thing) and being over-sweet with compliments on how much you like loud music, broken-down busses and fly-covered meals. Theroux does this as well or better than anyone. Sometimes I wonder why whoever he is badgering doesn't take a swing at him. I know i would like to at times when he bursts some mythical belief of mine.
Theroux also pulls no punches regarding the wasted charity that only enriches thuggish rulers and turns the rest into beggars. This has been a long-time theme and reading his thoughts and the experiences he has regarding this are incredibly insightful. I have never been to Africa but have spent years in other 3rd world places and Theroux is right. One of my favorite peeves is the charity tourist. People will spend ten thousand dollars to travel to some 3rd world country and do something that the inhabitants could easily do themselves if they wanted. Build a hut, dig a ditch, etc. That same ten thousand dollars could build a hut and provide employment for everyone in the village for a year if used to pay locals to do the project. But then there wouldn't be any cheesy pictures with poor children wearing cast-off American designer t-shirts. Anyway, I love Theroux's honesty.
Theroux's time in Capetown South Africa is a mix of faint hope regarding a few settlements and programs and a general malaise knowing that many places are growing worse and crime and corruption are becoming worse and worse in South Africa. Namibia seems the most hopeful location of this book, but Theroux finds it too filled with despair.
Time in Botswana revolves around wildlife camps and expensive tourism. Interesting but kind of Disneyish in the midst of a broken world.
Angola was the most interesting location. Everyone Theroux meets tells him to avoid this hell-hole. He finds that they are right with a thieving government and a helpless ethos. For example, a dog dies in the middle of a path through a village and is never removed. Anyone in a 3rd world country wonders why people often won't even pick up rotting garbage in their own doorstep. It doesn't take long for this kind of despair to penetrate the traveller and Theroux keeps asking himself in despair what he is doing in these places and what he intends to accomplish. When beggars hit Theroux up for aid, he tells them to go to their filthy rich countrymen who run the country. It sounds harsh as I write it, but Theroux is pointing out that billions of aid has just made things worse and until citizens of these 3rd world hell-holes make their own solutions, nothing will be changed. Theroux notes a fair number of deteriorating aid facilities. He wonders, as do I, why every obscenely rich movie star or athlete starts up their own charity named after themselves and over-pays various relatives and hangers-on to administer their "charity" when there are plenty of aid organizations already on the ground that would much more efficiently spend their money. It's not charity that they are trying to do; it's self-aggrandizement.
The chinese colonization of Africa noted by Theroux and other writers exists in this part of Africa also. What this means for the future, no one really knows, but it seems doubtful they will be any better for Africa than past colonizers like the Portuguese and others who ran the massive slave trade in Angola for so long. These countries have incredible resources from tourism to oil and diamonds and there is absolutely no reason that they have to be the way they are. Except that they are and reading Theroux trying to puzzle this out for years is well worth the time.
The last part of the book is slow and consists of Theroux realizing that his trip and his life are winding down. Tragically, three of the best friends that Theroux meets all die. One is crushed by an elephant at a tourist camp. One has his brains beaten out by thieves. And one has a heart attack at a young age. Like Africa, their promise never comes to fruition. This book seems incomplete since Therous gives up his journey and goes home. I had no problem at all with the somber tone of this book, since that is what Theroux experienced. I don't want perky; I want authentic when I read a travel book. 4 stars and worth your while to read.
Top reviews from other countries


This isn't the best of his travel books, in my opinion, and he is beginning to show his age in so many ways. However, he and I are the same age and l know I couldn't of made that journey myself these days. Time to retire,maybe?

There is a sadness to Thoroux's observations that run in tandem to his own diminishing abilities as he travels across the pillaged, denuded lands where corruption brings the population low in the face of untold wealth.
A somber book, but well written. Paul Thoroux's work will one day shine a light on the world that was to future generations, but for now we still have him to show what the echoes of empire have left.

