I read this book simple because I had just read the Tim Butcher book, Chasing the Devil in which Butcher decides to retread the steps of Graham Greene, as told in this book.
I should have learned. When I read Butcher's first book, I similarly attempted the book of the journey that he tried to follow in that volume as well, and gave up because of the way that Stanley came across. Indeed, in this book it is quite difficult to think that this only happened seventy five or so years ago. Both the land that Greene is visiting, and the land that he comes from, seem awfully alien, so it was hard to get into his head.
His cousin also completes the journey with him, but she barely gets a mention, and in fact often you will forget that she is his travelling companion until there is another throwaway reference.
Greene is fixated on the breasts of the young brown girls. Every pair is described in intimate detail, from the shape, colour, darkness and size of the nipples etcetera, and by the end of the book he just comes across as a dodgy character with a tit fixation. Certainly all of the descriptions help little to enlighten you about the world around him, and tell you more about the way his mind works.
I really wanted to enjoy this, but sadly I could not. The devils were interesting, as they were in the Tim Butcher book, but when Greene finally gets to talk to someone who knows a lot about the subject, he confesses that he was tired and did not note down much of the conversation, which he could subsequently recall little of. Oh well.
It took me ages to read - not because it is a large book, but because it did not keep my interest. I did manage to complete it after picking at it for several weeks, which felt like a bit of an achievement to be honest, but I won't be rushing about to read more Graham Greene any time soon!

Graham is Fiction writer and not a travel writer.

Graham Greene, então um jovem escritor, parte em 1935 da Serra Leoa (ao tempo, colónia britânica) para a Libéria independente, onde pretende viajar pelo interior, num percurso nunca antes tentado por ocidentais, para o qual nem sequer havia ainda mapas. Contrata uma grande equipa de carregadores e guias para o levarem, a ele e uma corajosa prima, a sua única companhia "civilizada".

Os motivos da viagem não são claros, ou não são claramente explicados pelo autor, que trabalharia mais tarde para os Serviços Secretos britânicos. Greene menciona apenas o seu fascínio pela África tropical e pela Libéria, então o único país independente de África, com uma história curiosa, por ter sido formado por emigrantes negros norte-americanos que desejavam criar um país democrático, esclarecido e livre em África, inspirados nos ideais dos pais fundadores dos EUA.

Depois de um início de viagem em que tudo é novo e fascinante, tanto para o autor como para as populações indígenas, que não estão habituadas a ver homens de pele branca, rapidamente tudo se torna monótono para Greene: a mesma paisagem de floresta húmida, as mesmas aldeias de cabanas de lama cobertas de colmo, os mesmos chefes, os mesmos "diabos" (feiticeiros) dançarinos, o mesmo calor insuportável, as mesmas reclamações dos carregadores... Nas últimas etapas, a viagem torna-se mesmo dolorosa, com o fim que parece nunca mais chegar, a época da chuvas que chega e torna os caminhos num mar de lama e mesmo umas febres fortes que quase o derrubam.

A juventude do autor também não ajuda no que respeita à escrita, que não consegue transformar a monotonia da viagem numa leitura interessante. Anos mais tarde, um Greene já maduro, falaria da sua estratégia para este livro em Ways of Escape ("Caminhos de Evasão", em português), indicando que tinha optado por um ponto de vista estritamente pessoal, que manifestamente, parece não ter resultado muito bem.

An uneven effort by one of the greatest writers of the last 100 years in English, this novel has moments of brilliance as it shifts, without much warning, between reminiscences of experiences in England and those of the tale underway, his trip into the interior of Liberia in the 1930s, when going into that nation's interior was a truly hazardous undertaking.

But what he also makes clear is that the trip was a boring, though no fault of his own in the account; this region of Africa at that time simply required Greene and his team of bearers to endure travel for miles through a "green tunnel" of vegetation that the bearers hacked their way through with machetes. So, no sweeping vistas, and every village visited, it seems, has more rats, plague and other dangers than the last.

In all, not a lovely journey nor a pleasant one to read the account of. Yet, this is Grahame Greene, so any effort of his, low-brow or high is always worth it, just for his facility with the English language.

I thought of my own Africa - the path ending at the forest - the dark river in the house

I read this in 1979, a few months before I headed to Liberia for two years, where I was a high school science and math teacher. I first stepped foot in Liberia about 50 years after Greene originally traversed the high rain forests of Liberia and Sierra Leone. What a thrilling book this was. His descriptions of people and the absolute density of the rain forest were interesting. At least one of Greene's maps showing areas that had not yet been explored by Westerners was marked "cannibals," and as it turns out, where I would live 50 years later. There is no traditional practice of cannibalism in West Africa, but it makes for a good story.

An interesting exploration of Africa rebounding from colonial conquest (Greene walked through Liberia on foot to see what it was like), it's by no means his best work. Sometimes, the writing is labored in ways that didn't see common to his novels. However, it does showcase the trudge of movement, the ways "civilization" impacted tribal culture, and how the African continent was attempting to recover.

Beautifully written. Some things jarred as they would no longer be considered politically correct - but this is the 1930s. Rather unfortunately, the parts not about Africa are often better than those about Africa.

A young Englishman and his female cousin decide to take a safari through Liberia in in days before world war 2. What is it they say about mad dogs and Englishmen? I appreciate Greene's subtle spirituality, which doesn't in the way of his enjoyment of a stiff drink. Greene treats/depicts the Africans he meets and employs with respect without sentimentality. His observations about the teenage girls he encounters is a bit off-putting, though. And it is a bit jarring to consider that his entourage was paid a pittance and made do with offal for their daily fare while Greene apparently included many cases of whiskey for his own benefit, to say nothing of Greene being carried about in a hammock.

I recently read Tim Butcher's book about travelling through the Congo and it is remarkable to contrast the conditions in west Africa now and 70 years ago. Green's jungle is full of life, the villages are peaceful, and the handful of missionaries and doctors from Europe can practice safely. Butcher's jungle is devoid of life, the villagers are continually fleeing rampaging bands of militia, and NGOs cannot function outside a few safe havens.

The saga of Englishman Graham Greene's journey through Liberia. An interesting look at early settlements along the coast and villages in the hinterland.

Journey Without Maps is, quite frankly, a piece of travel writing that’s taken on historical significance, the true story of Graham Greene’s first ever journey outside of Europe, across the border of Sierra Leone and in to Africa. It was also first published in 1936, before even the outbreak of the Second World War – as you can imagine, white men were neither common nor welcome in Liberia and the neighbouring areas, and so Greene’s work makes for incredibly interesting reading.

Sure, it can be tedious at times, purely because it’s hard work to imagine what it was actually like to go on that journey of his, but that doesn’t make it any less interesting – it’s just heavy going, and not the type of book you can read without really thinking. That’s probably why it’s just as good for the casual reader as it is for the academic, who wants to learn more about Africa in the 30s. If you fit in either category then it’s definitely worth buying.

In fact, if anything, it’s just as exciting as any of his novels, as if it’s made somehow more real by the fact that Greene himself is the central character, as well as the narrator. Besides, the journey itself would be no longer possible, I’m sure of it – the world has moved on in the last eighty years, for better or worse.

This is slight Greene, but even slight Greene has its rewards. There is crisp lovely evocative wrting, there are some interesting memory passages, and the descriptions of what he sees are fascinating. On the other hand, his take on race is very much from the 1930s: Greene's admiration for the noble savage may seem trite and/or offensive, as is his willingness to exploit native labor, but he also recognizes the degrading nature of colonialism and the brutalities of economic exploitation. So while we might wish some passages away, that's really hindsight talking.

The main problem with this book is that Greene is too sick and weary through much of it to really engage, mentally or emotionally, with his surroundings or his writing. So the book has a slogging sameness which, while it may faithfully reproduce his experience of his trek, doesn't make for the greatest literary experience.

Finally, the introduction by Paul Theroux is execreble. Theroux repeatedly asserts that Liberia couldn't have been as "wild" as Greene depicted it, but offers no evidence for his theory -- only surmises that are contradicted by the few facts he asserts. (At one point, Theroux says that people in the interior of Liberia must have been used to white faces because of the presence of Firestone Rubber in the country -- but Greene explicitly states that the Firestone presence was limited to a specific area on the coast!). Theroux's main point is that Greene was a "dilettante" and a "lucky" traveler, a point Theroux has made in other Greene introductions as well. What we are meant to take away from the introduction (since Greene would count as a pretty hardcore traveler in most of our books) is the unstated but loudly proclaimed "I Theroux am a REAL traveler and qualified to judge who is lucky and who is REAL".

Talk about the Anxiety of Influence! No one cares, Paul. You are a facile, annoying writer who will never be a tenth of what Greene was. You walk in his footsteps and no amount of latter-day introduction dissing will change that!