Jungle Lovers invites comparison with Graham Greene. The setting might certainly have been his, the serio-comic situations in which the characters find themselves frequently made me speculate as to whether Greene could have handled them any better. This is a Black—and a black—Comedy. I was reminded forcefully both of The Comedians and Travels with my Aunt, which is not to say that Mr Theroux sets out to imitate either, or that he is as good a novelist as Greene—yet. His use of language is never so cool and masterly, there is the occasional fuzziness in style. But, judged on its own terms, the novel is assured, mature and compassionate, the author has a fine eye for the ludicrous and he gives us a brilliant feeling of the stratification of life—something novelists of the 20th century seem to find harder and harder to do….

Unless...