Journey Without Maps

Graham Greene

White men were not particularly welcome in Liberia when Graham Greene made it the object of his first journey outside Europe. Drawn by the evident seediness of a republic founded for released slaves and, above all, by the primitive darkness and mystery which Africa represents in the unconscious mind, he travelled with a chain of porters from the border of Sierra Leone across the headwaters of several rivers and down to the coast at Grand Bassa.

‘No one who reads the book will question the value of Mr Greene’s experiment, or emerge unshaken by the penetration, the richness, the integrity of this moving record. No mental armour will be altogether proof against the subtlety of the arrangement and delivery of this material. It is a book to break down the mature and settled, yes, even the complacent heart’ – Guardian