Description
Book SynopsisA spellbinding travel book, exploring the psychology of walking, pilgrimage, solitude and escape.
'An extraordinary, dreamlike journey through West Africa' Adharanand Finn
At the age of twenty-seven and afraid of falling into a life he doesn't want, Robert Martineau quits his office job, buys a flight to Accra and begins to walk. He walks 1,000 miles through Ghana, Togo and Benin, to Ouidah, an ancient spiritual centre on the West African coast.
As he travels alone across rainforest, savannah and mountains, Martineau meets shamans, priests, historians, archaeologists and kings. Through the process of walking each day, and the lessons of those he encounters, Martineau starts to build connections with the natural world and the past - and, at last, to find the meaning he craves.
'Marvellous... A book about how to travel' Jay Griffiths, author of Wild
'[Martineau's] story, beautifully written, of how his pilgrimage of sorts changed him forever' Evening Standard
Trade ReviewA story of tenacity, told with humility, in a West Africa experienced deeply at the pace of a walk. I loved this book - its thoughtfulness, turn of phrase and lightness of touch as the author escapes one life to rediscover another. -- Sophy Roberts, author of The Lost Pianos of Siberia
Martineau segues effortlessly from practical desert challenges to striking encounters... [he] finds trust in the road and learns to trust his unrest... there is a sense that the waypoints he encounters inspire a new, and encouraging, optimism. -- Caroline Eden * Times Literary Supplement *
[Martineau] is fine and thoughtful company for the journey, sensitive to the fraught history of Europeans who have used Africa and Africans as a backdrop for their exploits * Washington Post *
Waypoints wonderfully explores how walking animates resilience in times of stress, anxiety and worry, illustrating, through personal experience, how the journey is often our collective human goal. -- Shane O'Mara, author of 'In Praise of Walking'
An astonishing dream-like journey...
Martineau has written a deeply affecting book which sears itself on the memory like the sun of the western Sahel. -- Philip Marsden, author of 'Rising Ground', 'The Spirit-Wrestlers' and 'The Crossing Place'
A wonderful book. -- Giles Foden * i *
An epic journey and a book worthy of it. A thrilling and poignant meditation on the elusive reasons for getting out of bed in the morning; a dazzling kaleidoscope of colour, sensation, and time. An important new voice has arrived. -- Charles Foster, author of 'Being a Beast'
Terrific... a travel-writing gem. -- Tim Butcher, author of Blood River
