In 1976 Shiva Naipaul spent 20 weeks in Kenya and Tanzania, concluding with a brief dash down the Great North Road to Zambia in the company of a party of trekking hippies. He does not seem to have been well prepared for his journey nor to have met anyone of much consequence while he was there. The story [told in North of South] is mostly one of chance conversations in aeroplanes, buses, taxis, customs posts and, above all, hotel bars. All this is told with a great deal of novelist's sparkle, a power of vivid description and of characterisation through reported dialogue, which will not endear Mr Naipaul to his many acquaintances when his book comes into their hands….

On the whole, Mr Naipaul's book is more informative about touts and tourists, pimps and prostitutes, than about the national and international politics of the East African countries. He makes it...