NONFICTION
The Lunatic Express: Discovering the World . . . Via Its Most Dangerous Buses, Boats, Trains, and Planes
by Carl Hoffman, $24.99
For many Washington, D.C.-area commuters, traveling dangerously means taking the red line Metro or driving a Toyota Prius. That lifestyle wasn’t risky enough for Carl Hoffman, a journalist whose book “The Lunatic Express” documents the five months he spent circumnavigating the globe by the most perilous forms of transportation available.
The idea struck Hoffman after years of reading news briefs blandly describing horrific travel accidents abroad: Bangladesh Ferry Sinks; Many Die. A self-described adrenaline junkie who collects passport stamps and thrives on dysentery-inducing street food, Hoffman decided to gain some perspective on just how dangerous travel is for most of the world.
He planned a worldwide trip that would extend 159 days and take him through Colombia, Kenya, India, Mongolia, Afghanistan and, worst of all, Los Angeles.
He kept one rule for the journey: get around only by the most uncomfortable, unreliable, disease-ridden and disaster-prone means.
In South America, he rode in buses known to carom off cliffs. He flew in planes more than 50 years old that were operated out of ramshackle airports with no control towers or runway lights. He crossed seas in ferries so overloaded with people that the ships were apt to sink even in ideal conditions.
In a book that is supposed to be about harrowing travel, many of Hoffman’s experiences seem benign, and despite his best efforts, he survives them all without a scratch.
In one telling moment, he attempts to board the train the book is named for: “The Lunatic Express,” a famously fatal 600-mile line between Mombasa, Kenya and Kampala, Uganda. Except one problem arises: The train, mysteriously, never arrives, and he must find another way across Africa.
Two hundred pages later, Hoffman admits, “No one could understand what I’d been through, done, unless they’d done it too.” Like him, readers discover it’s not how you get around, or whether you ever board the most dangerous train in the world, that’s important. The journey, he realizes, was within.
FICTION
Savage Lands
by Clare Clark, $25
Following her acclaimed “The Great Stink” and “The Nature of Monsters,” British historical novelist Clare Clark returns with a powerful third novel, set in the early 1700s in the struggling French colony of Louisiana.
Clark’s descriptions of the land — brutally hot, swampy, fetid with stagnant, mosquito- breeding water, unprotected from devastating spring floods and autumn hurricanes — provide a richly atmospheric backdrop for the intertwined lives of three settlers who are newcomers to this unwelcoming terrain.
Sent from France in 1704 as part of a group of “casket girls” committed to marry the soldiers and shopkeepers in the nascent colony, Elisabeth Savaret, a bookish and outspoken young woman, is immediately smitten with Jean-Claude Babelon. Theirs is a passionate marriage, interrupted by Jean-Claude’s frequent expeditions to nearby Indian tribes friendly to the French.
Jean-Claude distributes gifts and muskets, secures food for the colony and tries to ensure that each tribe will not succumb to the blandishments of the English, who are also wooing these small and numerous Indian nations.
Meanwhile, Auguste Guichard, a 12-year-old boy forced by the colony’s commandant to remain with a tribe of “savages” to learn their habits, develops an ear for the tongues of many tribal nations. When he returns to the settlement as a young man, he cherishes his friendship with Jean-Claude but also falls in love with Elisabeth, despite the difference in their ages. This never-acknowledged triangle and its complications eventually provoke tragic acts of betrayal.
Clark keeps her plot fresh and compelling by immersing us in the primitive conditions these colonists endure. Starvation when the crops fail, fear of attack by natives and frequent epidemics are constant challenges.
Equally as potent as the encompassing sense of place, the moral complexities that influence these characters infuse “Savage Lands” with emotional resonance. Clark’s commitment to historical color is matched by the dramatic arc of an engrossing story.
