Second reading: much the same, still good.

A small allegory of hopelessness, troubling, worrying and despairing. There is perhaps one tiny gleam of hope in it somewhere.

Technically, I admire the descriptions and the use of snakes. I can't agree with those who think this reduces Africans (or Americans) to stereotypes: but the characters are representative, for sure. His bottom line seems to be that plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, and cette chose was never a very healthy thing.

If you were nitpicking you might say that his view of development in Africa is a little behind the times, missing such aspects as Turkey in Somalia and China in the DRC, but that's how you would write a textbook, not a novel.

I think there are aspects of Nabokov in Theroux, but really he's Greene. Perhaps not innovative, but pretty bloody devastating.