AN AFRICAN IN GREENLAND is the most remarkable travel journal I have read in a very long time. As a boy in Togo, Kpomassie was injured and while recovering read a book on Greenland that seized his imagination. This book recounts the events that led to this early obsession with Greenland, his efforts to reach the country and his travels in Greenland once he arrived.

Kpomassie is a charming and honest narrator. He is at once perceptive, wry and compassionate in his account. He describes his travels and interactions with various cultures with an almost anthropological detail and yet he never forgets the people he meets are human, wonderfully flawed perhaps, but human nonetheless. He turns his critical eye on his Togolese upbringing, his time in France, Germany and Denmark and ultimately Greenland. He never neglects to mention his own foibles, in his interactions in the lives of those he meets. (How could he not since he was the first African most of the Greenlanders had seen.)

The story is also tinged with sadness for the loss the customs and rituals Kpomassie had hoped to witness in Greenland, the combined poverty and generosity of the people and the inevitable sorrow of ending a journey. It is a fascinating study of Greenland but also a study of a man pursuing a dearly held dream and that is what makes it such a satisfying read. ( )

If you ever wondered what Greenlanders like to eat, this book will answer all your questions. Mmmm... seal.... ( )

Greenland

"Kpomassie was a teenager in Togo when he discovered a book about Greenland - and knew that he must go there. Working his way north over nearly a decade, Kpomassie finally arrived in the country of his dreams. This brilliantly observed and superbly entertaining record of his adventures among the Inuit is a testament both to the wonderful strangeness of the human species and to the surprising sympathies that bind us all."