One Dry Season: In the Footsteps of Mary Kingsley
by Caroline Alexander
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Description
With richly evocative images and wonderfully entertaining anecdotes, Caroline Alexander transports you to the dense interior of equatorial Gabon. In One Dry Season, she chronicles her adventures as she makes her way alone through dangerously primitive territory. When she first read of Victorian explorer Mary Kingsley's travels in the French colony of Gabon, Alexander knew she had to experience the present-day nation for herself. Soon she is retracing Kingsley's route-struggling through show more tangled vines in humid rain forests, chugging up the churning OgoouE River in a packed steamer, and fending off gigantic cockroaches. The country she discovers is a challenging mixture of Africa's exotic past and its practical present. A splendid storyteller, Caroline Alexander introduces you to the colorful new friends she made along the trail including a shy mission nun, a half-mad French woman, and a village chief who treated her as an errant teenaged daughter. Lisette Lecat's expert narration brings out all the excitement of today's Africa. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
This seemed a little slow and wondering to me. Usually that's okay in a travel book, but somehow this writer never seemed to resolve ANYTHING, which got a little boring after a while. Perhaps I was influenced by having read Kingsley's wonderfully witty narrative first.
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Author Information
12+ Works 5,129 Members
Common Knowledge
- People/Characters
- Mary Kingsley
- Important places
- Africa; Gabon
- Epigraph
- What were your wares that they sold out so quickly? --Akan traditional dirge
- Dedication
- In memoriam, Eric Mitchell
Classifications
- Genres
- Travel, Nonfiction, General Nonfiction, Biography & Memoir
- DDC/MDS
- 916.72104 — History & geography Geography & travel Geography of and travel in Africa East Africa Republic of Congo (Congo-Brazzaville); Gabon Gabon
- LCC
- DT546.128 .A44 — History of Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania Africa History of Africa West Africa. West Coast French West Africa. French Sahara. West Sahara. French-speaking Equatorial Africa Congo (Brazzaville). Middle Congo History
Statistics
- Members
- 107
- Popularity
- 304,255
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.30)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook
- ISBNs
- 6
- ASINs
- 2
