Tick Bite Fever

An interesting and in some places entertaining account of growing up in 1970s Africa. Written from a personal point of view with little mention of the political situation but instead focussed on the adventures life in Africa brought. Laughed out loud in some places at memories of quirks of Africa.

Tick Bite Fever (3/3 people found this helpful)

I fould this book very amusing but also very thought provoking. Having been to Kenya four of five times you realise this ia a wry humour sometimes but you can actually laugh aloud and keep reading bits to others. Descriptions of countryside are good and is a must read, hope he writes more

Africa is the star (8/10 people found this helpful)

A really interesting book. The memoir of a young white boy growing up in post colonial Africa. Written with real affection, the Africa revealed here is fascinating, beautiful and vibrant.
One complaint. I've noticed other reviewers have praised the humour in this book. I didn't laugh out loud at a single passage. The attempts at comedy seemed contrived and were the only thing I disliked about this book

Dont read this on a bus! (4/7 people found this helpful)

I really enjoyed this book. It had me sniggering and giggling like an adolesant! Having been brought up in Africa, and worked in Kenya, David Bennun has captured its spirt absolutely. A good introduction to the place if you are contemplating travel there.

First Symptom? Serious Laughter!... (3/7 people found this helpful)

No oxymoron that. Not in David Bennun's hands. A Brit whose family left England for Colonial Africa in his boyhood, Bennun's nature evidently never expatriated the stiff upper lip, the sharp eye for the contagiously absurd, or---and this may be Fever's greatest selling point, for it makes all the rest so possible---the palate for language as only the bellwether British wield it. Far from a Pythonesque humor; you know: with simple silliness the Wont that you often wish Wouldn't? Bennun is drop-dead funny. And I don't laugh-out-loud easily. More than once, my chest having long since rounded the corner into some soundless seismic convulsing, I dropped the book on my faintly blue-feeling face from asphyxiating in bed. (The story of his Jack Russell terrier alone is worth humor's All Time list.) And I ask you: How often do any of us ever delve along a literary skill that wastes not a single sentence? You can count those masters of concise thoroughness on half the one hand you use to hold up a favorite book (or in my case, not). Bennun is as aerodynamic an author, in his own milieu, as the greatest I've ever seen: and if that makes him the Nabakov of Satire? then Vladimir--not David--it is. Damn near every utterance morphs into a garrulous gem, no sentence dispensable, most quip-laden and quotable, all culminating in chapters memorable to a one about the real Africa in David's openly unreal vantage, his own foibles always foremost, from a self-deprecating wit-in-progress. Myself?.....Never one to let the complete absense of company dampen a conversation, I'd often read things in the book over again immediately--aloud--just to share them with somebody---Anybody---me usually the handiest, splitting my own sides with disemboweling dependability. But, like the boy in the book, I too have a hard time learning my lessons. Why even now, from time to time, foolishly undeterred by my bedtime injuries I read on, headless, only to wind up again the very picture of casualty: a free arm broken over my eyes, elbow high, while alone beneath it my open mouth, wide as a floozy centerfold for dentists, palsies off in porcine snorts, gaped like a gash so they tell me, the very wound of the proverbial Death From Laughing. So: don't say you haven't been warned........

Needless to say, David Bennun's book ends way too soon, which is to say, it ended at all, and, Endorphin-addiction being what it is, sent me hunting the world wide web for the guy when all else failed. Now I DID locate a superb skill-set-exemplary article he penned about ITN's anchor-siren Daljit Dhaliwal meeting her prime american fan David Letterman, on air, that may still be available on-line, but other than that for now, alas---rein plus. Nevertheless, Bennun here is a fever worth catching, but only if you can stand the symptoms. Happy breathing.......

David Bennun

Reader Reviews:

great humour, an absorbing read (0/0 people found this helpful)

Tick Bite Fever (3/3 people found this helpful)

Africa is the star (8/10 people found this helpful)

Dont read this on a bus! (4/7 people found this helpful)

First Symptom? Serious Laughter!... (3/7 people found this helpful)

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