The Last Train to Zona Verde. Paul Theroux

Having travelled down the right-hand side of Africa in Dark Star Safari , Paul Theroux sets out this time from Cape Town, heading northwards in a new direction, up the left-hand side, through South Africa and Namibia, to Botswana, then on into Angola, heading for the Congo, in search of the end of the line.

Journeying alone through the greenest continent, Theroux encounters a world increasingly removed from both the intineraries of tourists and the hopes of post-colonial independence movements. After the Cape Town townships, the Namibian bush and the browsing cattle of the great sunbaked heartland of the savannah, he crosses "the Red Line" into a different Africa: of heat and poverty, and of roadblocks, mobs and anarchy.

A final African adventure from the writer whose gimlet eye and effortless prose have brought the world to generations of readers, The Last Train to Zona Verde is Paul Theroux's ultimate safari.