At sea with oneself

The Voyage Home is the third book I’ve read about Africa recently. Like the others it captures and distills the unique texture and smell of Africa, the touching sense of being a decade or two out of time. Both The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith, so wonderfully tender and funny, and Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller — civil-war-torn Rhodesia seen through the eyes of the author’s childhood self — brilliantly evoked early chapters of my own life in that part of the world.