The Country-cides of Namibia and Botswana

A mauling of mankind and a travel diary make rather odd bedfellows. However, in The Country-cides of Namibia and Botswana, these unlikely playmates not only share the same pages, but they also enfold each other in a somewhat intimate embrace.

This remarkable union is all thanks to Brian. Because, as he embarks on a three-thousand-mile trip around Namibia and Botswana – which he records – he also embarks on an extended bout of ‘assassinations’. To illustrate to his wife how humankind is ill-suited to be the custodian of the world, he seeks to show her how inept it is at running its own affairs – at the level of the nation state. He does this by providing her with a series of critical commentaries on thirty of the world’s countries – commentaries that are so critical of these countries that they constitute nothing less than their murder. In short, he commits one act of country-cide after another and, in doing so, he assembles his indictment of mankind.

So, for example, he explains why Canada can easily be regarded as the most John Major of countries in the New World and why Argentina is the South American national equivalent of Gordon Brown. He also explains how one of the great imponderables of North Korea is how it deals with the lavatory arrangements at all those gargantuan rallies in Pyongyang – and why ‘Saudi Arabia’ and ‘fun’ never appear in the same sentence , other than when there’s a negative in there as well. Then there’s the under-achievements of Russia…

This work of ultimate irreverence and unremitting humour is inexplicably the eighth book in David’s seven-part ‘travel’ series and his first in the completely comprehensive subversion of the travel book genre.