Nor does he approve of safari tourism, which, at the end of the day, is little more than theater. Theroux has no patience for the вЂњslum tourismвЂќ that has mushroomed in Africa, the travelers drawn to вЂњthe people of the abyss,вЂќ the вЂњpoverty pornвЂќ taken up enthusiastically by no one so much as the poor themselves. He is also acutely aware of the ironies: that an American traveler can sit on a patio, serenely sipping his sauvignon blanc, and look out at a toxic cloud that hovers above the sprawling black townships that he can stay at a luxury hotel and partake of an ample breakfast before he goes out to where the hungry live that he can ride a Mercedes limo to the rattletrap bus that will ferry him into the continentвЂ™s green heart. Alert, questioning, taking pains to ensure that his reader understands AfricaвЂ™s complicated history, he lets us know how difficult this is for him: He is in his eighth decade, after all, he has gout, he has an aversion to the fly-spotted food that is ubiquitous around him.

They were not reconditioned huts or renovated hovels, they were new and solid-looking, and they stood very close together in what were obviously the footprints of the shacks and sheds that I had seen a decade before.вЂќДЇrom Cape Town to Namibia to the Okavango Delta, Theroux is his inimitable, delightfully grouchy and incisive self. The squatter camps in Cape Town, once a proliferation of ticky-tacky shacks built on the stink and sand that circled the city, are now вЂњa settlement of tidy, russet-roofed houses that lay behind a high fence beside the road. The Africa to which he returns, however - the Africa that once вЂњgave me everythingвЂќ - has been transformed for both good and bad. вЂњThe Last Train To Zona Verde: My Ultimate African SafariвЂќ by Paul Theroux (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) вЂњI was hurrying away from my routine and my responsibilities and my general disgust with fatuous talk, money talk, money stories, the donkey laughter at dinner parties.вЂќ It is travel as rejection, and he is glad to get away. This time, however, he isnвЂ™t after beauty or strangeness it is a sudden aversion to mindless social gatherings that is the fuel. Returning to Africa, that вЂњkingdom of lightвЂќ where he spent the happiest years of his life as a Peace Corps worker in Malawi and Uganda, he does what he has never done before: travel up the little-known west coast, from Cape Town toward Timbuktu. Now, in вЂњThe Last Train to Zona Verde,вЂќ Theroux undertakes what he claims is a valedictory trip, the last of his career.

He has been called a grump, a misanthrope, a curmudgeon, and indeed he doesnвЂ™t suffer fools as he goes, but his books never fail to reveal the nature of a people or the startling beauty of a landscape in prose that seems vibrant and new.

For вЂњDark Star Safari,вЂќ published a decade ago, he swept up the right side of Africa, hoping to rekindle his youthful enthusiasms. The author of 46 books, fiction and nonfiction, he is best known for his wry вЂњThe Great Railway Bazaar,вЂќ which chronicled a 1973 journey through Asia, or вЂњThe Old Patagonian Express,вЂќ in which he hopped a Boston train and rode the rails all the way to the cold, barren heart of Argentina. Setting out solo, intent on an overland journey, relying on ramshackle buses and cars, he depends on nothing so much as вЂњchance meetings,вЂќ вЂњdumb luckвЂќ and вЂњthe kindness of strangers.вЂќ He is drawn to the road not by run-of-the-mill wanderlust but because, for Theroux, travel resembles nothing so much as writing: вЂњa groping in the dark, wandering into the unknown, coming to understand the condition of strangeness.вЂќ To pit yourself against the strange is never easy - but the strangeness is why you go.ДЄt 72, Theroux has had a long career shepherding readers through the unfamiliar. His brilliant, razor-edged observations have always struck me as gritty and hard-won. Somehow, itвЂ™s not surprising to learn toward the end of Paul TherouxвЂ™s thoroughly engrossing вЂњThe Last Train to Zona VerdeвЂќ that this master of travel literature has never found traveling easy.

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