In the United States, the contemporary story of Africa is usually depicted as a series of calamities – AIDS, famine, war – affecting countries with corrupt, oppressive or nonexistent governments. In fact, I suspect the story of Africa is portrayed this way in most newspapers in the world, even African newspapers such as the Johannesburg Mail & Guardian, which often features particularly egregious examples of corruption and crime in South Africa. I suppose the maxim is universal: if it bleeds, it leads.

How is the curious, caring American to get beyond the headlines then, to understand what life in Africa is really like? You could listen to foreign aid groups, but they have an interest in only articulating the negative. Or, you could travel to the continent, but then you would have to go beyond the tourist areas and the game parks. You’d have to talk to both government officials and former political prisoners, shop owners and poor people, prostitutes and missionaries, aid workers and tribes people, whites and blacks. And to get a really good idea, you would have to speak to them in their own languages, and you would have to travel by land and take risks.

Luckily, this is precisely what Paul Theroux has done in his latest travel memoir, Dark Star Safari. A rarity for the genre, Dark Star Safari gives you an experience almost impossible to achieve by actually going to Africa yourself. Theroux lived in Uganda and Malawi as a Peace Corps teacher in the 1960s and 70s, and because of this, and because of his knowledge of the people, politics and languages of the continent, Theroux is the perfect guide to Africa. Everywhere along his epic journey from Cairo to Cape Town, Theroux chooses the road less traveled, the more difficult overland or boat route. Additionally, Dark Star Safari mixes the adventure of a travel memoir with the reporting of a New Yorker article. Theroux has dinner with Nobel-winning authors Naguib Mahfouz in Egypt and Nadine Gordimer in South Africa. He meets with white farmers in Zimbabwe and one of the landless veterans who are invading the farms with the support of President Robert Mugabe. He meets with Uganda’s Prime Minister – a friend from Theroux’s Peace Corps years.

This is Theroux’s first proper trip back to Africa since he taught there in the 1970s. He had envisioned the trip as a homecoming of sorts, and as often happens with such trips, he is disappointed by what he finds. Theroux’s joy at returning, and his passionate hope for the continent’s success comes through in his writing. Unfortunately, he finds that very little has changed, and what has changed has often declined. Theroux's disappointment grows as he travels to where he had previously lived. When he left Africa, the people were filled with hope from their new independence. In his absence, many of Africa’s new leaders became dictators, and even after they’ve left, most of the countries have failed to recover. Although Theroux is disappointed, he also enjoys being in a place that has not yet joined the rest of the world in constant interconnectedness. He despairs at the inefficiencies and dangers of African transportation, but he enjoys being without an itinerary. He admires Arthur Rimbaud, who ran away from his life in France and disappeared into a new life in Djibouti.

But despite his occasional wish to stay in Africa, Theroux seeks to explain its failure to develop. To do so, Theroux focuses on foreign aid, which he decides has done more harm than good. The aid groups have multiplied in number, but Africans have done little to help themselves. Here the book has elements of a polemic against the aid groups. He makes both good and petty arguments – they drive SUVs and won’t give him a lift – and many of the people he meets on his trip reinforce his theory. Theroux contrasts the subsistence economies of the villages, which although they aren’t “developed” succeed in feeding their populations, to the slums of the cities, where the jobless do little productive. He is repetitive on these points, and by the time Theroux, near the end of this 472-page book, writes “One of the epiphanies of my trip was the realization that where the mode of life had changed significantly in the Africa I had known, it had changed for the worse,” this message has been drilled into our heads, and it is no longer an epiphany, but a lament.

Although his disappointment in Africa – the sentiment of a teacher whose students have failed him – can at times lead to a similar feeling in the reader, Theroux’s humor, even when bitter, lightens the mood. Theroux's combination of tetchiness and intelligence can also create humorous encounters, such as this exchange with a rude teenager in Malawi:

"The teenager collecting the fares had been calling me muzungu since the border. At first I ignored him, because it was insulting and beneath my notice, but the punk kept it up, asking me in Chichewa, "White man, where are you going?" ...In the past, no Malawian would have dreamed of speaking to a stranger in such a rude way. Finally, when he persisted – this was in the darkness of the crowded, smelly minibus on the rutted road – I faced him and said, "Do you want me to call you 'dark man'?" He went silent and sulked... "Kodi. Dzina lanu ndani?" Excuse me. What's your name? "Simon," he said. "Good. Don't call me 'white man' and I won't call you 'dark man.' My name is Paul."

Theroux is also hilarious when he confronts a missionary with contradictions in his belief, and often alludes to an erotic novella he is writing to pass the time during his trip.

Beyond the usual travel-book descriptions of places and the difficulties of travel, Dark Star Safari joins insightful journalism with the sardonic perspective of a studied traveler who dismisses the Hemingway-inspired image of Africa, as well as the crusades of missionaries and aid groups. This brilliant book gives a more nuanced, if not more hopeful, perspective of a fascinating continent.