Tony Wende returned to South Africa in 1991. Looking towards a career in journalism, he advised to put on a rucksack and explore Africa. Like many South Africans, he had hardly been north of the Limpopo, and so over the next four years he travelled to and covered stories in Angloa, Mozambique, Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda. a book about Africans themselves. It is about a passage through a continent filled with the most confusing contrasts: ageing Soviet jets on their way to strafe Unita positions against a backdrop of palms and an azure sea; the boy in the Angolan town Viana, whose leg has been blown off by a landmine, but whose hope and trust seemed to deny the agony of a land torn by bloody warfare; the almost serene stillness of the Tete Valley in Mozambique, chilling for its nightmare scenery of burnt-out trucks and its forlorn landscape. events and places of this century. It is in this verdant hell that the journey is finally overtaken by the story.