Destination: Kenya
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Travel Literature
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Reading up before you go is a great way to get a feel for Kenya – all kinds of foreign authors have written on the country, and the prospective visitor can choose from a wide range of perspectives on every facet of its culture.
Already a firm favourite among animal lovers and conservationists, A Primate’s Memoir: Love, Death and Baboons in East Africa, by Robert M. Sapolsky, is an engaging account of a young primatologist’s years working in Kenya.
Equally personal and a bit less serious at heart, David Bennun’s entertaining Tick Bite Fever tells of the author’s accident-prone childhood in Africa, complete with suicidal dogs and Kenya Cowboys.
For a more serious look at social and cultural issues, read No Man’s Land: an Investigative Journey Through Kenya and Tanzania, by George Monbiot, which follows the fortunes of the region’s nomadic tribes.
Bill Bryson turns his social conscience and trademark gentle humour on the region in his African Diary, concentrating on a seven-day trip to Kenya. All profits (and the author’s royalties) go to CARE International.
Londoner Daisy Waugh provides a city girl’s take on the thoroughly untouristy town of Isiolo in A Small Town in Africa, giving a more modern
alternative to the many settlers’ tales in print.
Increasingly hard to find but worth the effort, Journey to the Jade Sea, by John Hillaby, recounts this prolific travel writer’s epic trek to Lake Turkana in the days before the Kenyan tourist boom.
Finally, whether you like her attitude towards the natives or not, Out of Africa, by Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen), remains perhaps the single definitive account of the colonial experience in Africa.
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