Anyone who has read Paul Theroux knows one of his key themes is the American innocent abroad, refusing to acknowledge the dark side of the people he encounters…or himself. In many of his past novels, his characters are transplanted into a new culture and struggle to survive against environmental, cultural and psychological pressures.

For those who enjoy Theroux, his latest novel does not disappoint. In fact, it soars.

Once again, we are treated to an anti-hero who is forced to meet his overblown expectations head-on. And once again there are tendrils of Theroux’s own life: Ellis Hock, like Theroux himself, hails from Medford, Massachusetts and spent time in the backwaters of Malawi as a teacher during a tender age.(Theroux was actually dismissed from the Peace Corps for becoming involved in Malawi’s politics).

Now, forty years later, Hock’s business and marriage have failed, his daughter has revealed her avarice, and he decides to return to The Lower River – the poorest part of a poor country and home of the superstitious Sena people.

The ensuing tale – a tale of salvation and damnation, evocative of Heart of Darkness or Lord of the Flies – is downright hypnotic. Hock is known as the man who handles snakes in a village that fears them; this tale, too, grips around the reader, holding tight, not letting go. Hock “did not want to think that Africa was hopeless.” But in reality, “the school would remain a roofless shell, a nest of snake, the office a hideout for the orphan boys, the clinic a ruin.”

The plot twists are so intriguing that I don’t even want to allude to them; suffice to say that Theroux delves deeply into whether a healthy interest in a different culture can coincide with the arrogance and egotism that we bring to that culture. “What do you want? I’m from America. I can get food, I can find money for you,” Hock says, when placed in a potentially dangerous situation. Yet as he later discovers, “You come with money to the poor, and they are so frenzied by hunger that all they see is the money. They never see your face, and so when the money is gone, you are revealed as mere flesh: a surprise. They don’t know you.”

The most riveting parts of the story are the power plays between Hock and Manyenga, the cynical and sniveling village chief, who oppresses him with meaningless gestures of honor, baring to the core what he believes the mzungo “divinity” – the white man – is all about. There is much to mull over: “This looks such a simple place. But no, everyone lies, so you can’t know it all…If you’re hungry, you will do everything, you will agree to anything, you will say anything.” Once more, Theroux has masterfully displayed a clash of the cultures and their false expectations.