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What prompted the writing of this account, which comes garlanded with praise from veteran foreign correspondent Ryszard Kapuscinski? The author, a prize-winning young Portuguese journalist, undertook his journey across Africa in 1997, from Angola to Mozambique. His purpose, he claims with a strange inversion of logic, "was the most noble of all - that is, I had no purpose in particular". So what attracted him to a war-ravaged region, where treacherous mines outnumber people and poverty is embedded in the gaunt bodies of survivors?One could conclude that Mendes was a footloose thrill-seeker, hell-bent on showcasing a remarkable literary talent, recklessly putting at risk his own life as well as others'. His opening disclaimer might have been a suicide note: "The war is still going on there. Some of my travel companions died. There was no guarantee I would return." Yet there is enough evidence of a greater sensitivity and compassion to disprove the theory of the author as show-off kamikaze, although he gives little else away about himself.
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