In Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad brilliantly evoked the sense of isolation that white interlopers feel in Africa: the indescribable loneliness and physical languor that eventually bring on moral collapse. In the person of Kurtz, Conrad seems to be saying that Africa is no place for whites unless they have extraordinary strength of will.

In the deceptively titled Girls at Play, Paul Theroux returns to this haunting theme with a vengeance. His people, three white women—teachers in a girls' school in the East African bush—are not extraordinarily strong-willed, but women without men, hapless creatures set in an alien land at a wrong time in history. Today's Africa is for Africans and whites are, at best, tolerated. The women are strangers and have no business being here at all….

Girls at Play has the right feel to it. Yes, Conrad was right and nothing has really changed...