With flights it would cost from £875 01473 667337 Prices start at £575 per person, including transport, accommodation and some meals, but not flights. With flights, it would cost from £875 (01473 667337; ).'DR LIVINGSTONE, I PRESUME?' AND OTHER FAMOUS WORDS"In the Moorish caf?in the Kasbah, it is men's bodies which are silent, which cannot drag themselves away, leave the glass of tea, and rediscover time through the pounding of their own pulse." Albert Camus sums up 'Summer in Algiers'"Morgan thought about replacing the gin in his filing cabinet, decided against it and poured himself another stiff three-fingers. Durrell, Somerset Maugham and No?Coward stayed at the Cecil Hotel (16 Saad Zagloul Square; 00 20 34 84 0367, pictured below); it's still open, although it is now owned by a chain. Rooms start at US$85 (£50).For a more general Egyptian literary trail, Imaginative Traveller runs a 22-day Nile and Beyond tour from Cairo. It is no wonder people have been writing about it ever since ink first touched papyrus.From the ancient stories of Herodotus to Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile, people have been trying to commit this majestic stretch of water to paper. They include Gustave Flaubert, Sir Richard Burton and John Speke, whose expedition to discover the source of the Nile ended at Lake Tanganyika in 1858. You can read Alan Moorehead's 1960 account of the exploits of Speke, Burton and other Victorian adventurers in The White Nile.But there's more to Egypt than its trademark river. Cairo boasts Nobel prize-winner Naguib Mahfouz among its literary sons. Alexandria can claim connections with the poet Constantine Cafavy, EM Forster, who lived there for a while, and Lawrence Durrell, author of The Alexandria Quartet.
Although, from Greene's description, this is only likely to disappoint the most dedicated literary fan.WHERE CAN I GO?Head to the Gambia - the territory covered in the American author Alex Haley's mammoth Pulitzer prize-winning story Roots, based on his family's history. Juffure, the village from which his forefather, seven generations back, was captured and sold into slavery in the States, is now a big tourist attraction. Its main aim is to promote the arts in Afrikaans, so it's fairly genre specific, although it's apparently fun for non-Afrikaans speakers too. The next one is due to take place from 3 to 11 April next year. You can get more information nearer the time by calling 00 27 44 203 8600 or e-mailing info kknk.co.za.TAKE ME TO THE HEART OF DARKNESS...You'll have to stick to armchair travelling for the time being. Author Michela Wrong may have followed In The Footsteps of Mr Kurtz, but even if you wanted to seek out the gruesome trail up the river Congo described in Joseph Conrad's 1899 novel, it isn't currently safe to do so. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office advises against all holiday and other non-essential travel to the Republic of the Congo outside the main cities of Brazzaville and Pointe-Noire and against all visits outside Kinshasa and the eastern half of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). "Much of eastern and north-eastern DRC is emerging from war and internal conflict, and security conditions are still unpredictable and volatile", it states.All of which means that it's the same story for fans of William Boyd's novel Brazzaville Beach, Ronan Bennett's The Catastrophist, Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible, V S Naipaul's A Bend in the River and Andr?ide's Travels in the Congo. All of these are based, to a greater or lesser fictional extent, in the same area.Also currently off limits is the City Hotel in Freetown, Sierra Leone, which appeared as the seedy Bedford in Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter. |
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