Africa: The Dream and the Reality, Tom I-II

Africa: The Dream and the Reality, Tom I-II - Zikmund Miroslav

1. Tom I - 269 s. 2. Tom II - 315 s. Books with 308 original photographs and 3 maps (a 30x45cm colour map of the writers' route through Africa + 2 b&w maps in text: a diagram of the altitudes and a sketch map of the surroundings of the new volcano Wowokwabiti). The authors were still in their twenties when they set out to drive round the world in a mass-produced Czechoslovak car (the now famous Tatra V 8), whose trials and achievements were followed by radio listeners at home with almost as much excited interest as the adventures of her two occupants. Dramatic moments of suspense, moments which sometimes ended comically but which might always have ended in tragedy, make this one of the most thrilling travel stories of today - no less thrilling because so much depended on the third member of the team, for whom the deserts, jungles and wild mountains of Africa were all part of a monster endurance test. Courage and endurance were needed by the Tatra's crew, too, along with humour, common sense, resourcefulness, physical fitness and a thorough knowledge of the countries they passed through and the ways of the people they met and made friends with. The journey would never have been made at all were it not for these very qualities of courage and endurance, for all through the six years of Nazi occupation of their country these two young students clung tenaciously to their plan, working in secret to have everything prepared for the great day of liberation. Languages, geography, economics, currency calculations - all the donkey-work of planning a trip like this. How they persuaded the Tatra firm to provide the car is told within...