Overview

The Last Banana began when the author visited his university friend Marios Ghikas, whose family farmed in Tanzania. Anticipating nationalization, Marios invited Tucker to visit again to help him spend 'the last banana' of his 'unremittable fortune', and Tucker returned in 1972. These were the first of 16 African trips spanning 43 years. There were 180 Greeks in Chaggaland, but Nyerere's policy of returning land to the watu people destroyed this community. Three stayed on; Marios was one. In this absorbing and elegantly written book, Tucker recalls conditions in equatorial Africa before the European scramble for colonies. He reminds us of Livingstone's vision of ending the slave trade by bringing 'the 3 Cs' (Commerce, Christianity and Civilization) to the interior of Africa and suggests that Greek settlement in Africa was an important, part of fulfilling this vision - a story previously untold in English. Tucker contrasts the moral force and fruits of the pioneer missionaries and explorers who brought Christianity to Africa with the triviality of modern travel and the surrealism of democracy and freedom expounded in Africa today.

Full Product Details

9781906768218

Table of Contents

Reviews

Author Information

Shelby Tucker read law at the University of Oxford, and is a writer and traveller, and the author of the bestselling Among Insurgents: Walking Through Burma. Tucker is an international authority on modern Burmese history. His acclaimed work Burma, The Curse of Independence, was published in 2001.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available