The Sunday Haul

If not to places like Provence, Tuscany, Bali, Maldives and such places featured in mags like Conde Nast Traveller then I’d really like to go to Angola, Sudan and such places in the African continent. The reason behind such a desire isn’t because I want to disappear from the face of the earth but because what I’ve been reading (or read) about Africa. I’m half way through reading Edward Hoagland’s ‘African Calliope: A Journey to the Sudan’ that I had picked up at Abids sometime in March this year. Like all the travel books on Africa I’ve read so far, exactly two in fact, Hoagland too writes about the deprived lives of the people of Sudan, the numerous tribes with names like Dinkas, Nuer, Shilluk, Baris, Madis, Lotukos, Langos, Laconos, Logirs, Dongotonas, Kakwas, Acholis and so on. He writes about the lives these tribals lead in a land ravaged by internecine wars, famine and pestilence. There’s also mention of the wars and coups that always seem to be going on. He wrote the book sometime in the mid-seventies and now forty years later things are still worse if the Darfur horror is taken as an example. Hoagland has a style that is very different from other travel writers. After I finish this book I am going to look out for his other travel book- ‘Notes from the Century Before’ that I hope I will find soon.

Incidentally war was the major theme of another travel book on Africa that I finished reading just a couple of weeks ago- Ryszard Kapuscinski’s ‘Another Day of Life.’ It is a slim book but manages to say a great deal about the civil war in Angola. Funny how it falls on some travel writers to write about the ugly realities in countries while in travel magazines only the good gets written about. In any piece on Africa in travel magazines one gets to read only about the Big Five or the wildlife parks. By reading the travel magazines and travel books I am getting a hang or a complete picture of the actual ground realities in Africa. Not that it is going to take me anywhere but still it doesn’t hurt to know such things.

I do not remember now if Angola was one of the places he had been to but Paul Theroux in ‘Dark Star Safari’ too writes about his travels in Africa especially Malawi where he was in the Peace Corps teaching English. ‘Dark Star Safari’ was my introduction to Theroux and his compelling style of writing. Luckily the British Library in Hyderabad where I found DSS also had ‘Kingdom by the Sea’ that I read immediately afterwards and became hooked to Paul Theroux’s writings. Later on I found second hand copies of this book at Abids. Last Sunday I found yet another copy of ‘Kingdom by the Sea’ and got it for just twenty rupees. It was a decent enough copy that I plan to give to a friend. That was the only book I bought at Abids this Sunday though I saw a few titles worth picking up. I saw an almost new copy of Marquez’s ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ but didn’t buy it. Similarly I did not pick up Elmore Leonard’s ‘Touch’ with pictures of the stars who played roles in the film of the same name. Though I had decided to buy Louis L’Amour’s books after reading ‘Education of a Wandering Man,’ I did not feel like buying ‘Kilkenny’ that I saw at the same seller who had his other book ‘How the West Was Won.’ But I plan to buy it soon.

Of course there was the ‘Literary Review’ supplement in ‘The Hindu’ which was another highlight of the Sunday. Just about everyone seems to be taking swipes at Adiga nowadays. Smitha Rao in her review of Soumya Bhattacharya’s ‘If I Could Tell You’ has taken a potshot at the award winning writer which is quite funny.