Theroux is my favorite non-fiction writer with his incisive characterizations and interpretations of events. This novel makes use of those skills and his travels through Africa, especially the more impoverished areas. An American man's life arrives at a series of failures in family and business. He returns to Malawi to relive the only time he felt effective and purposeful as a Peace Corps teacher. You can't go home again...in fact it may never have been home. His beloved village had become one of extreme poverty and starvation held together by the lies and theft that are a part of such deprivation. Reminiscent of Graham Greene's A Burnt Out Case with dashes of Colin Turnbull's A Mountain People, the main character lives through one horror after another in trying to escape...what? Himself? The village? His mistakes? It is a harsh book in its ultra-sharp reality, but it is more than worthwhile. The starving of Malawi had enough in common with those starving souls of Orwell's Paris to make it clear that the painful deceptions the deprived hold on to are fairly universal. The ending was not immediately satisfying but has become more so after living with it for a few days. I still prefer Greene's soul-searching, but Theroux is more authentic.