Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Viking Press/Compass Books (1964), Paperback, 253 pages
Description
Summoned to Whitehall in 1949, Laurens van der Post was told that in old British Central Africa there were two large tracts of country that London didn't really know anything about, and could he go in there on foot and take a look, please? Venture to the Interior is the account of that journey, a journey filled with adventure and discovery, flying from London across Europe and Africa, and after days in small aircraft, on foot across the mountains to the two lost worlds of central Africa.
User reviews
LibraryThing member nandadevi
I am no fan of Laurens van der Post. I suspect that some of his fame as a writer is due to his taking up the cause of equality among races, and his horific wartime experiences as a prisoner of the Japanese. But his writing - so far - had struck me as polemic and pedestrian; a master of the
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pedagogic travelogue and no more. But there is a hint in this book of what I have perhaps missed so far. In the middle of this book, which otherwise entirely lives up to my opinion of the author as a very average writer, is a story that stunning, both in the sense of the events and the telling. It could be said that the events described are so extraordinary that no writer could tell it badly, but van der Post's writing here is unsurpassed anywhere, by anyone. I can not think of any writer who has ever told of death and grief with such pure white heat. So for that, I recommend this book - very highly - to any reader of stories of Africa in the 1950's, and any reader who wishes to rehabilitate their opinion of the author. Show Less
LibraryThing member skirret
The most boring and soporific of the textbooks I had to read for the GCE -- a view shared by almost everyone in my class.
Subjects
Awards
Anisfield-Wolf Book Award (Nonfiction — 1952)
Notable Books List (1951)
Language
Original publication date
1952
ISBN
none