Darkest England

by Christopher Hope

Faith, courage, and a way with the natives ... these gifts carried the great African explorers through the perils of the dark continent. Now they will stand David Mungo Booi in good stead on one of the last great journeys of modern times, the exploration of Darkest England.
Booi is a descendant of the San or Bushmen who once roamed widely over the Karoo region in South Africa. Chosen by a conclave of tribal elders, sponsored by The Society for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior of England, Booi embarks on a mission never before attempted by civilized to explore England as a site for settlement and to assess the friendliness and capability of the natives. He sets out to answer ancient questions about this strange Why do they believe there will always be an England? Did they build Jerusalem in their green and pleasant land? Above all, will their present queen redeem Queen Victoria's promise to save her loyal Red People of the Karoo?
Our hero's epic journey takes him from prison to Parliament, from lunatic asylum to Buckingham Palace. Battling every step of the way against disease, cruelty, and superstition, his English notebooks tell a tale as heroic as any African safari, but much darker, and infinitely funnier.

Genres: Fiction, Humor, Travel

283 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

He studied at universities of Witwatersrand and Natal. He is an author of poems and novels, also published autobiography, biography of Robert Mugabe, dictator of Zimbabwe, and travel book Moscow! Moscow!, which he got prestige PEN Award. Debut novel A Separate Development (1981), satire on apartheid system, forbidden in South Africa, got the David Higham Prize for Fiction.

Reviews

[Philip · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brutal but perceptive satire on the condition of being English. Unexpected gem of a read. David Mungo Booi sets off on a diplomatic mission from the surviving San people to the Queen. His exploratory travels and eventual death at the hands of murderous British children brings to mind the following, The British Isles is made up of four nations, The Scots, who keep the Sabbath and everything else they can lay their hands on.The Welsh, who pray on their knees and their neighboursThe Irish, who do not know what the devil they want, but are willing to fight anyone for it. And the English, who consider themselves to be a race of self-made men – thereby relieving the Almighty of a terrible responsibility.....

[Kristin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very strange book. It was brilliant in places with such sharp satire, very much a flip side to the anodyne English character as Kate Fox describes it in Watching the English. You see the cruelty and greed and harshness of not just the English, though specifically oriented to aspects of their national character, but the peoples of all wealthy western nations. You can't help but laugh as you groan at the way in which it is described through the ideas of a very naive aboriginal from the Cape. Even from the beginning the novel was patchy, with areas that just didn't seem to come off the way the author had intended, but these spots grew larger and larger until they took over the novel from about halfway through. It then became so absurd with events being more and more outside of any sense of reality and the same stereotypes being explored ad nauseum. One began to find the portrayal of the naive Red Bushman to be offensive and even more stereotypical than that of the English characters and one read hoping it would turn itself around and get back on track. Unfortunately, it did not. But I couldn't put it down. I was more enthused and eager to read this book, to come back to it each day, than I have been for many books that I've liked more. It's a novel enough concept and sharp and accurate enough in its satire.

I'm curious to hear what others thought of this book; get in touch if you want to discuss it.

[Amos Van · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent satire - and too near truth to be off the wall. I enjoyed this book tremendously.