Ellis Hock never believed that he would return to Africa. He runs an old-fashioned menswear store in a small town in Massachusetts but still dreams of his Eden, the four years he spent in Malawi with the Peace Corps, cut short when he had to return to take over the family business. When his wife leaves him, and he is on his own, he realizes that there is one place for him to go: back to his village in Malawi, on the remote Lower River, where he can be happy again.
Arriving at the dusty village, he finds it transformed: the school he built is a ruin, the church and clinic are gone, and poverty and apathy have set in among the people. They remember himthe White Man with no fear of snakesand welcome him. But is his new life, his journey back, an escape or a trap?
Interweaving memory and desire, hope and despair, salvation and damnation, this is a hypnotic, compelling, and brilliant return to a terrain about which no one has ever written better than Theroux.
Review
"What we have finally is a relentless tale of suspense adroitly presented. Therouxs practiced hand in the matter of dialogue and scene-making is strongly in evidence. No one will nod off reading The Lower River...Its a particular kind of frightening fun to watch evil flexing and spreading its leathery wings, and really feel it. The Lower River gives the reader just that." -- The New York Review of Books
" The Lower River is riveting in its storytelling and provocative in its depiction of this African backwater, infusing both with undertones of slavery and cannibalism, savagery and disease. Theroux exposes paternalism in Hocks Peace Corps nostalgia, his sense of responsibility, almost a conceit of ownership. That sense of responsibility, and Hocks modest contribution to the welfare of a people he was once genuinely fond of, has been replaced by a harsher mode of operation, run by coldhearted contractors living apart in impregnable compounds. I have to leave, Hock pleads. Im going home. To which the village headman replies, with chilling menace, This is your home, father. " -- New York Times Book Review
"In this hypnotically compelling fiction, [Theroux] wrestles with questions of good intentions and harsh reality...A gripping and vital novel that reads like Conrad or Greenein short, a classic." -- Booklist, starred
"Theroux successfully grafts keen observations about the efficacy of international aid and the nature of nostalgia to a swift-moving narrative through a beautifully described landscape." -- PW, starred
"Extraordinary...The suspense is enriched by Therouxs loving attention to local customs and his subversive insights...Theroux has recaptured the sweep and density of his 1981 masterpiece The Mosquito Coast. Thats some achievement." -- Kirkus, starred
"Theroux's latest can be read as straight-up suspense, but those unafraid of following him into the heart of darkness will be rewarded with much to discuss in this angry, ironic depiction of misguided philanthropy in a country dense with natural resources yet unable to feed its people." -- Library Journal
About the Author
PAUL THEROUX is the author of many highly acclaimedbooks. His novelsincludeThe Lower Riverand The Mosquito Coast, and his renowned travel books include Ghost Train to the Eastern StarandDark Star Safari. He lives in Hawaii and on Cape Cod.