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Product Description
In the summer of 1795 a 24-year-old Scot with an optimistic heart and an unforgettable name docked on the Gambia River. So began one of the most extraordinary journeys of exploration in West Africa. Tackling fever, starvation, wild beasts and curious natives, Mungo Park soldiered on to his prize, the mysterious Niger, finally proving that the great river flowed to the east. The young explorer returned home a hero, his journal an instant bestseller. Over 200 years after this ground-breaking trip, Tom Fremantle - having long been inspired by Park - decides to follow in his doughty hero's wake. And so with a dugout canoe, a slothful ox, a donkey called Che and various motorised jalopies, Fremantle blazes his own haphazard trail down the Niger. En route he visits Timbuktu and Dogon country, dodges hippos and camps with desert Bedouin. His journey ends in the heart of Nigeria where Mungo Park lost his life on an ill-fated return expedition to Africa. Fremantle, like Park, puts his trust in strangers on the road and whether Senegalese prostitutes, Bozo fishermen or Malian chiefs, he brings their stories, their hopes and fears, vibrantly to life. This is a book that fuses past and present and reveals the spirit of Africa in a whole new light.
About the Author
Tom Fremantle's restless career has included time as a teacher, journalist, dustman, bartender in a Hong Kong nightclub and jackaroo on an Australian sheep station. He is the author of two previous travel books: Johnny Ginger's Last Ride and Moonshine Mule.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Every now an then, one encounters travel books that try to be more than just a mere account of the author's journeys through lands that the casual reader is unlikely to have visited for himself. Sometimes, these books have a distinct purpose, most commonly following the route taken by a long-dead explorer. Tim Butcher's 'Blood River' is such a book.
So too is this one. Tom Fremantle has managed to pull off the trick of combining a potted biography of a suitably eccentric and long-dead explorer - Mungo Park in this instance - with a very good account of a journey through West Africa from the Gambia to the Niger estuary via Timbuktu by any means possible - particularly with the aid of a mule, an animal for which Fremantle displays a particular fondness. A warts-and-all travelogue - a decent African travelogue cannot be anything but - is combined well with perceptive insight into a man whom history has largely forgotten.
It is possible to mess up such an approach completely, but Fremantle does a very good job here. I must confess that I had never heard of him before picking up this book, and having read it I would be very keen to read more of his books.
So too is this one. Tom Fremantle has managed to pull off the trick of combining a potted biography of a suitably eccentric and long-dead explorer - Mungo Park in this instance - with a very good account of a journey through West Africa from the Gambia to the Niger estuary via Timbuktu by any means possible - particularly with the aid of a mule, an animal for which Fremantle displays a particular fondness. A warts-and-all travelogue - a decent African travelogue cannot be anything but - is combined well with perceptive insight into a man whom history has largely forgotten.
It is possible to mess up such an approach completely, but Fremantle does a very good job here. I must confess that I had never heard of him before picking up this book, and having read it I would be very keen to read more of his books.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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1 review
Fascinating, readable book on Muslim world.
10 Nov 2007
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Really well written book on the Muslim world. It reads like a travelogue so that one doesn't even realize how much pertinent information is contained therein. One of the best books I've ever read on the subject and it was hard to put down.
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