1 comments about In Southern Light: Trekking Through Zaire and the Amazon.

1. Anyone who likes travel literature will certainly not be disappointed in Alex Shoumatoff's IN SOUTHERN LIGHT. It is a book in two parts. In the first, he travels with a friend up a large, but seldom-visited tributary of the Amazon, the Nhamunda, in search of any clues about the eponymous Amazons themselves. He finds mostly caboclos, mixed race people who live off fishing, hunting, and a little farming when possible, and the last remnants of the Indian peoples who lived in the region for centuries. The second, less-focussed journey is in the former Zaire, now Congo (again). Though the current wars and massacres had not begun, the reader gets a strong impression of the crumbling, decaying society that existed under Mobutu. The author travels by truck, by riverboat, and through the jungle on foot with some BaMbuti (pygmies). I liked two things about this book. First, I liked Shoumatoff's attitude towards the people he met: neither condescending and critical, nor full of gushing admiration. He took each person as they came, just as he would have in his own society. If you are tired of the snide, superior writing style of a Theroux or Naipaul, this could be a welcome change. Secondly, I liked his descriptions of the natural world of the forests, rivers, and interactions between people. My criticism is that both sections lack focus and sometimes the book and the diary are a little too close together. The Amazon section starts off with a very fascinating description of the Greek Amazon legend and how the early Europeans were influenced by it, how the Indians may have fed it back to successive explorers once they realized what the intruders were looking for. But, since Shoumatoff found no vestige of the legend in his travels, there really was no point to setting up this "straw woman". He was basically "messing around"; travelling to see what he could see. That would have been enough I feel---travel for its own sake is just as good a reason as any. Nothing much holds the Zaire section together either: it's just a bunch of impressions. I happened to like them, but some people might feel the book is a little diffuse. Criticisms notwithstanding, IN SOUTHERN LIGHT is well worth reading. I recommend it to anyone looking for a different sort of travel book, one not about the pastel, effete joys of Provence or Tuscany.

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