This travel book, published in 1936, is the account of a journey the author and his female cousin took on foot (more or less) across Liberia. At the time, the only British map of Liberia had a large, empty, white space on it, and the only U.S. map had the same white space with the word "Cannibals" written on it. Hence, the title.
It is less impressive when you learn that Greene hired 25 native "carriers" to accompany them. They not only carried the stuff, they carried his cousin, and, on a few occasions, Greene.
Greene and a couple of the carriers seemingly always got far ahead of the rest of the group, and he apparently gave his cousin only a vague idea of where they were going. At one point, they nearly went different directions, and they likely wouldn't have gotten together again until they reached the coast. This does not seem very chivalrous.
Was the journey itself a good idea? It sure doesn't sound like loads of fun:
"This, as I grew more tired and my health a little failed, seemed to be what I would chiefly remember as Africa: cockroaches eating our clothes, rats on the floor, dust in the throat, jiggers under the nails, ants fastening on the flesh."
To me, this book seemed disorganized and hard to follow. It might have made more sense to a British audience in the 1930s.
But I did like Greene's defense of missionaries, which I think holds true even more today than it did then:
"A great deal of nonsense has been written about missionaries. When they have not been described as the servants of imperialists or commercial exploiters, they have been regarded as sexually abnormal types who are trying to convert a simple happy pagan people to a European religion and stunt them with European repressions. It seems to be forgotten that Christianity is an Eastern religion to which Western pagans have been quite successfully converted. Missionaries are not even given credit for logic, for if one believes in Christianity at all, one must believe in its universal validity. A Christian cannot believe in one God for Europe and another God for Africa; the importance of Semitic religion was that it did not recognize one God for the East and another for the West."

Greene si mette in viaggio in Sierra Leone e Liberia negli anni '30 per conto di un'associazione anti schiavista, dovrebbe fingersi turista (?) e riportare eventuali sacche schiavismo.
Da quell'esperienza uscirà questo libro, che della questione ufficiosa non fa parola (la missione segreta sarà svelata solo dopo decenni).
Se la prima parte (quella i Sierra Leone, che è solo un preambolo al vero obiettivo liberiano) riesce a interessare per l'intelligenza del punto di vista, la seconda, mantiene alta la profondità delle considerazioni, a risulta incredibilmente noiosa per la ripetitività delle vicende (camminata massacrante, nuovo villaggio, problemi con i portatori).
Interessante anche l'aspetto sociale, di un bianco inviato in veste antischiavista e le sue considerazioni alcune volte al limite del razzismo, oltre che di un inglese che riesce a gestire ogni emozione (paura, stanchezza, noia, socialità) solo con l'aiuto dell'alcol.

Not a heavy weight book. But I enjoyed reading it. Essentially it reads like a diary of his trip through Liberia in the days when you had to have a bunch of men haul all of your stuff as you walk through the jungle. His trip took place in the late 1930s. What makes the book fun is how squeamish Greene is through the entire journey.

There is a bit of a message in it. He talks about how close our civilization can be to the social conditons of the people living in the jungle. He was psychoanalyzed before his trip so he is close to the idea that there are not many differences between modern man and the people who are living nearer to our more "primitive" natural states.

A tremendously disappointing travel book. It's not as obnoxious or as outright racist as Evelyn Waugh's journals from Abyssinia, but it is still very regressive and colonialist. There are a few interesting passages concerning rats and missionaries, but, even though Greene did manage to talk with the President of Liberia, it's clear that he is hopelessly Anglo-centric in his observations and that he views the people of Liberia and Sierra Leone -- all then within the uncharted regions of maps -- as pitiful and primitive, despite his best efforts. As such, this volume is extremely off-putting.

Graham Greene's first non-fiction travel book was Journey Without Maps (1936), a chronicle of his wanderings through the interior of Liberia when that territory was still uncharted – hence the title. His unprejudiced and sympathetic view of the locals, and his acute observations are remarkable for the time. It bares comparison to Freya Stark’s Winter in Arabia, which I have reviewed here, though I found Stark’s vivid and insightful prose a bit superior.

Greene with his cousin Barbara spent a month in 1935 traveling through Sierra Leone, French Guinea and Liberia. Over a month they traveled 350 miles through uncharted in many places jungle. This was his first trip outside Europe and what an adventure. He had 25 porters and lots and lots of whisky.

Liberia one of then only two African countries governed by Africans. Towards the end of the book there is a bit about Firestone and how they got a million acre 100 year lease for a rubber plantation and how Greene saw how this would keep the country impoverished.

The writing is fascinating from the different people he met such as missionaries, politicians, soldiers, tribal chiefs. As well as the simplicity of his porters and their joy of a full moon.

The poverty, corruption and racism is described by Greene throughout. His exhaustion, frustration, joy, insights and you can see where he gets his characters and descriptions for future based African novels. This journey shaped his career as an author.

It is odd that he hardly ever mentions his travel companion Barbara. She also wrote a book of the journey which I hope to read one day aptly called ‘To late to turn back’.

A great read.

it's a different kind of Graham Greene book, I discovered it when i was going to Liberia 1990 and realized there were very few books on Liberia..Liberia was a soul-wrenching experience, a country forgotten and not so different from when GG was there. I carried the book with me and referred to it often and although the material was anachronistic and colonial, it still had some relevance and when I was over-whelmed by the inherent contradictions of what I was seeing, found it comforting.

Non-fiction about Graham Greene’s travel through Liberia and Sierra Leone in 1935. It took four weeks and included walking for 350-miles at a time when a map of these countries did not exist. He and a team of hired locals from various tribes trekked through forest paths and slept in a series of isolated villages. He was occasionally carried in a hammock but preferred to walk as much as his health allowed.

I read this book to find out what western Africa was like back then. This goal was only partially achieved, as its perspective is that of a British man of his era. While he comes across as more open-minded than many, it is still filled with anachronistic and condescending views regarding the people of Africa. It seems to alternate between ideas that would have been more compatible with 19th century colonial imperialism and those that reflect the difficult times of the 1930s.

It includes descriptions of diseases, insects, rats, weather, and other discomforts that made traveling through these remote areas so difficult. Apparently, drinking was required – lots of drinking. We meet a number of interesting local villagers, as well as an eccentric group of Europeans who have decided to abandon their previous lives. It is difficult to say I enjoyed this book. Greene’s outdated attitudes are almost painful to a modern reader. However, I did find it worthwhile from a historical perspective. As I read, I noticed that Greene was willing to reflect on his own prejudices and, through living and working together, finds a new appreciation for the African people.

Graham Greene, English literary great, traveled through Liberia in the 1930s. There are the usual scenes of witches, danger, creepiness, rats, cockroaches, and bumbling bureaucrats. However, there are also paragraphs like the following:
"Today our world seems peculiarly susceptible to brutality. There is a touch of nostalgia in the pleasure we take in gangster novels, in characters who have so agreeably simplified their emotions that they have begun living again at a level below the cerebral. We, like Wordsworth, are living after a war and a revolution, and these half-castes fighting with bombs between the cliffs of skyscrapers seem more likely than we to be aware of Proteus rising from the sea."
Greene waxes nostalgic about a lost simpler or more innocent time. He waxes poetic about living on the edge of subsistence; however, he lived and traveled as a white man and a foreigner with cash through the countryside and as a journey with a definite end point, not as a way of life. He repeatedly compares his carriers who do all of the packing of items through lands where they have never been as "children" which makes one want to smack him.
Overall, a good travelogue.

At age 31, Greene traveled to Liberia for four weeks. He went with his cousin, who also wrote a book about this expedition. The journey across Liberia was vivid and interesting. It happened in 1930s, when Nazi was still growing. Liberia got its name because 'liberated' slaves from America emigrated here, and built the first sovereign state in Africa in 1847. However due to its remote location, there was less modern influence. White people were not common then. There were only two maps for this country. The maps contained very little information. It seemed foolish for Westerners to travel to the place. Greene wanted a change in life, maybe searching for inspirations for his next book, he jumped out of the comfort zone.

At first Greene was immersed in the fresh atmosphere of new environment. He was very glad he made the choice. Exotic world lured him, but not for long. When the journey into jungles actually started, he felt himself stupid to put himself in this situation. The journey was not comfortable at all. There were diseases and insects. They needed to cope with rats, cockroaches, flies, beetles, mosquitoes, to name a few. To make things worse, the hot weather could stifle everyone. Greene found out 'plans' wouldn't work out. He realized the best way to finish the journey was to be flexible at all times. Greene even fell into a coma near the end of the trip.

Despite all the misery, Greene still found happiness during the trip. He pondered what travel meant for life. He wrote down some poetic personal reflections. Examining some past memories made him realize more. Traveling was a way to discover one's life. Indeed, Greene certainly found some memorable moments. In addition to Greene's personal feeling, there was abundant observations on local cultures. It is a little outdated now but still shows us a bygone era. The book is an interesting read. It should appeal to readers that are fond of Africa.

Overall: 3.5 stars

I can't truthfully say I enjoyed this book, despite my love of Graham Greene. Being Greene, the writing soars at times, but for the most part I struggled with the tedium, which may simply reflect the tedium of the journey itself. Clearly Greene himself struggles with it. He makes vague claims about casting off civilised sophistication and searching for the primitive self, but I do struggle with his motivations for undertaking such a miserable trek. Hundreds of miles of monotonous jungle, village after festering village, will-sapping heat, mosquitos, jiggers, an endless fight to keep the hired native carriers in line, and the ever-present risk of running out of whiskey. Perhaps it all seemed like a good idea at the time? I remember once thinking the same thing about a holiday on the Gold Coast...

For reasons known only to Greene, he chooses to dispense of the female cousin who accompanied him with just the occasional mention, and in the end we know next to nothing of her, or her journey. And it's hard to not notice Greene's fascination with black breasts. One wonders whether he was aware of it as he wrote, or whether it infected the manuscript in cod-Freudian fashion. Perhaps it was simply the novelty of exposed boobs? They weren't common in post-Victorian England, as we all know.

Anyway, by the time Greene made the beach at Monrovia, I was only too glad to climb into the surf boat with him and board the steamer that whisked us away from 1930s Liberia. He'd had enough. So had I.

Greene hikes through the interior of Liberia in 1935. What could possibly go wrong?

A great book.