I am unfamiliar with Paul Theroux's highly-praised earlier novels, and only wish I could like "Jungle Lovers" more. There is so much that is admirable in the novel, and deeply-felt; it distresses me to have to say that I, for one, found it ultimately unsatisfying. Forced in the ideological hothouse. Even so, "Jungle Lovers" abounds with virtues. It is genuinely perceptive. Mr. Theroux's ear for the absurd, for the nuances of British and African dialogue, is convincing, subtle. He also writes exceedingly well about the taste and feel of tropical Africa.

Put baldly, "Jungle Lovers" is about the folly of preconceived American ideas about Africa. On the one hand, the clumsily capitalist (Africa, the last commercial frontier, candidate for the American way) and, on the other, the presumptuously revolutionary. The ultimate Play-Pen U, for a would-be Che….

[The novel teeters] uneasily between Waugh-like distance and the intensity of...