Waugh In Abyssinia – Evelyn Waugh, 1936 ★★

Hooray for Fascism

Evelyn Waugh’s most famous travel book is celebrated more than it is actually read, a good thing for the writer’s reputation as actually reading Waugh In Abyssinia exposes his worst traits: indifference to human suffering, a tendency to boredom, and a badly blinkered mindset.

It’s not only that he comes out strongly in favor of the Italian occupation of the land known today as Ethiopia, but the bland, superficial way he makes his points. As fascist apologia, it’s rather wan.

Reading it today does sting, as he justifies Mussolini’s broadly condemned 1935 invasion as the natural result of Abyssinian truculence and lassitude. Waugh exposes here a disdain for non-European people he did better to conceal in other writings, even if his main target is the European liberal elite who condemned the invasion after their own countries enriched themselves the same way decades before.

Remote People – Evelyn Waugh, 1931 ★★★

Ramblings of a Homesick Traveler

Early on, Evelyn Waugh’s travel notes did double duty providing material for novels while also sourcing his journalism. For that reason, his travelogues often feel like afterthoughts.

For lauded travel writers like Paul Theroux or William Least Heat-Moon, the book is the focus. However brilliant at dishing and dunking as Waugh was, his road accounts often feel unformed by comparison.

In Remote People, the World of Waugh is an exciting, amusing, often cantankerous place to explore. Still, at the end of the day the only road that matters may as well be the one that takes you back home.

A Bend In The River – V. S. Naipaul, 1979 ★★★½

Western Civilization Rules

The unique voice of V. S. Naipaul has both blessed and cursed his literary legacy. Often celebrated for his outsider view of Western civilization, he is also lambasted as a crude, sexist apologist for same.

One thing he could never be accused of was sentimentality. His books take shots in all directions, ridiculing progress, tradition, Marxism, capitalism, religion, ethnocentrism, even multiculturalism. When considering a book that encapsulates his iconoclastic cynicism as well as A Bend In The River, it’s important up front to accept and even appreciate the author’s desire not to play nice.

That doesn’t make A Bend In The River a great novel for me; I don’t rate its story or characters that high. But it is powerful to read.

The Biafra Story – Frederick Forsyth, 1969 [Revised 2001] ★½

Who Mourns for Biafra?

They call them crimes against humanity, but do they count if not everyone admits they are crimes?

This was the problem facing a young British journalist who had what seemed to be a huge story in his hands, one where millions of helpless civilians were killed. But to many of his colleagues, and his own government, the deaths were unfortunate byproducts of settled policy.

Who mourns for Biafra? This becomes a question without an answer, and a cry which permeates each page of this angry, difficult book.