In Praise of Savagery - 9780007414031

One man's journey in the footsteps of a great explorer into the heart of Africa

As a young man, Warwick Cairns met the then elderly explorer Wilfred Thesiger and the two men struck up an unlikely friendship. Invited to visit him at his African home, Cairns decides to make a bit of an adventure of it and do some of the journey on foot. When he himself was a young man, Thesiger led an expedition to explore the course of the Awash river in Ethiopia. Every westerner that had gone before him had been killed by local tribesmen. Needless to say, he survived. Alternating chapters chart Warwick's journey with that of Thesiger creating a captivating dual narrative that is part travel book, part biography, part autobiography, and part history with fair doses of philosophy and humor thrown in for good measure. This highly original book defies classification, but is always effortlessly readable.