Books by Mungo Park
Travels into the Interior of Africa
by Mungo Park
I loved this book. Park comes from a pre-racist Europe, and he’s travelling along the 16th parallel – the sort of watershed between “Animus” Africa and Islamic Africa. It’s not even part of the language of the age – assumed white European superiority. He’s a gloriously open traveller, and also there’s a sort of whimsical incompetence about him. He ends up in his Y-fronts at the end of his first journey and has to hitch a ride home on a merchant ship.
Interviews where books by Mungo Park were recommended
The best books on Colonial Africa, recommended by Sam Kiley
‘Wherever you go today in the Congo, you will find monstrous warlords. But you will find far more volunteer nurses and Red Cross workers and teachers who haven’t been paid for 20 years but are still doing their job, not allowing things to fall apart.’
