Tourist in Africa OUP Volume Announced

The Oxford University Press has announced the publication of another new volume in its Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh project. This is A Tourist in Africa (1960) and will be volume 25 in the series. Here’s the description from the OUP’s UK website:

A Tourist in Africa was Evelyn Waugh’s final travel book, and one of his most interesting. Restless and intolerant of the English winter, Waugh boards the Pendennis Castle for East Africa by way of Italy and Suez, going on to retrace the routes of journeys he took as a much younger man through Kenya, Tanganyika, the Rhodesias, and other East African countries. He embarks on his trip at the very moment when many of these countries are beginning to assert their independence after decades of British rule. As he travels, Waugh contemplates the changing face of an Africa he has known intimately as well as his own increasingly awkward fit in the modern world. Even as he contends with his own encroaching age and the unwelcome changes to international travel, his usual zest for adventure and discovery asserts itself at every turn. A much better sailor than flyer, Waugh laments the impending eclipse of sea travel as well as the declining appetite for danger and daring he witnesses in some of his companions. This edition provides hundreds of contextual notes to illuminate the historical, cultural, and biographical details of most interest to readers of Waugh, travel writing, and African history; a complete textual history which traces every change made to the text from Waugh’s first drafts to the first published British and American editions; new and original illustrations; and a thorough but eminently readable introduction by Patrick R. Query.

The OUP announcement also provides this information about the editor of this volume:

Patrick R. Query is the author of Ritual and the Idea of Europe in Interwar Writing. He was formerly Secretary of the Evelyn Waugh Society and co-editor of Evelyn Waugh Studies. He is a Professor of English at the U. S. Military Academy in West Point, New York.

The estimated UK publication date is 25 February 2021 and the price is £85.00. Details are posted at this link.  USA publication information is not yet available. This volume will follow November’s UK publication of Waugh’s 1950 novel Helena (USA date is January 2021).

UPDATE (10 October 2020). The US publication date for A Tourist In Africa is 25 April 2021 and the price is $110. It is available for sale from Amazon.com.

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