The book review:
Whew! In novel form, this book tells all you ever needed to know about the Lost Boys of Sudan. The story begins with the civil war violence in 1983 that shattered the peaceful villages where Sudanese of various backgrounds lived together more or less harmoniously. Fleeing destruction of their world by Arab marauders, first hundreds, then thousands, even ten thousands of black African youngsters—mostly boys, but a few girls and later whole families—began to trek from their villages into the unknown in search of safety and peace. Months and hundreds of miles later, these refugees found little succor in squalid camps in Ethiopia. Later they were forced to move hundreds more miles back through the Sudan into northern Kenya. There they settled into a teeming camp that became home for ten years. Finally, several thousand of these wanderers were granted refuge in America.

The book review:
I think Wilbur Smith has lost it. With this book he turned from solid adventure tales set realistically in a recognizable Africa to pure fantasy. I was attracted to this novel by the map inside the cover that, for the most part, accurately portrays East Africa’s Great Lakes and river systems, especially the Nile. I reckoned that any novel set against this backdrop would at least have a realistic setting and thus be suitable fodder for this review column.

The book review:
Dark Star Safari—Overland from Cairo to Cape Town marked Theroux’s return to Africa in the year 2000 after thirty years absence. He strove to travel the length of the continent as a solo voyager using local transportation such as buses, trucks and trains. Using his other travel books as models, he closely observed those whom he met and commented trenchantly, candidly and cynically about them. The value of the book is that Theroux writes so well that his observations ring of truthfulness—whether or not they are accurate. The compilation of anecdotes forms a body of work that paints a realistic picture of contemporary Africa. Furthermore, because he revisits territory and situations known to RPCVs, we have the advantage of seeing again places and people we once encountered.

The book review:
Kenya—The Struggle for Democracy, still hot from the printer, is a compilation of scholarly essays about contemporary Kenya. The individual pieces are honest and blunt. Authors make no effort to hide prejudices that are aimed at colonialism, the Kenyatta and Moi regimes. Judgments on the Kibaki era are hedged, but various contributors fear it too is becoming engulfed in the same vortex of oligarchic power that has plagued Kenya for generations.

The book review:
The Iron Snake is a novel set in Kenya around the turn of the previous century when the railroad was being built. The title, of course, refers to the railroad and is drawn from a Kikuyu prophecy about the coming of wazungu. Author Gaudet weaves a good bit of accurate history and several real persons into the fabric of his novel, but most of the characters and the specific plot are fictional. Yet the setting, the geography, the Kisettler Swahili, and the mood evoke an authentic Kenya of that era. Some of this authenticity, however, is offset by the author’s penchant to attribute some 21st-century morality and attitudes to his characters, for example, when the heroine engages in village good works using a community-based development approach. Similarly, Gaudet generally treats his African and Asian characters humanely and not with either the paternalism or racism that would have more accurately reflected the epoch. Nonetheless, his use of a Kikuyu sage discussing the power of oaths as a forewarning of Mau Mau was a nice touch.

The book review:
I had to read this book just to see if the ego of the author as indicated in the title was matched by accomplishments. Indeed, I was pleasantly surprised to find a thorough discussion of the evolution of education in Kenya as seen by one of its movers and shakers. Furthermore, Professor Ogot provided interesting glimpses into the parallel, complicated, tribal, often scary, power-driven scene that was (and in many respects still is) Kenyan politics.