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Award-winning writer Paul Theroux draws upon
personal experience of living in Malawi in his
eye-opening novel, about one man's return to an Africa
he no longer recognises, The Lower River.
Decades ago Massachusetts salesman Ellis Hock spent
four years in Africa - and the continent has never left
him. So when his wife walks out and his business goes
belly up, Ellis turns back to the one place in which he
briefly found happiness.
Yet returning to the village
of Malabo shocks him. The school he built is a ruin. The
people he remembers are poor, apathetic, hostile. The
country labours as if under a great, invisible burden.
However, Ellis is determined. This is his escape, a
paradise regained.
But escape can be a snare, a trap
for the unwary . . .
The Lower River is a
hypnotic, compelling and brilliant return to a terrain
no one has ever written better about than Paul Theroux:
the tragic stage of modern Africa, AIDS-ravaged and
despairing in the face of creeping consumerism, greed
and dependence.
'Remarkable, admirable, riveting,
heartbreaking. A masterly, moving portrait of how Africa
ensnares and enchants' Guardian
'Terrific
writing. Theroux's senses are always on full alert'
Evening Standard
'Powerful, vivid,
shocking' The Times
'Theroux
invests this very 21st-century journey into the heart of
ennui with a caustic bite, like the snakes that pop up
throughout' Metro
'The sense of
menace is masterful. Theroux has never written a better
novel' Sunday Telegraph
American
travel writer Paul Theroux is known for the rich
descriptions of people and places that is often streaked
with his distinctive sense of irony; his novels and
collected short stories, My Other Life, The
Collected Stories, My Secret History, The
Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro, A Dead Hand,
Millroy the Magician, The Elephanta Suite,
Saint Jack, The Consul's File, The
Family Arsenal, The Mosquito Coast, and his
works of non-fiction, including the iconic The Great
Railway Bazaar are available from Penguin.
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