Journey Without Maps

This early travel book by one of the twentieth century’s most distinctive novelists recounts his 1935 journey into the interior of Liberia, then one of the least mapped regions of West Africa. Setting out with his cousin, he ventures beyond the colonial settlements and into remote villages, recording the physical hardships of the trek as well as his own psychological and moral reflections. The narrative reveals a young writer testing himself against isolation, illness, and uncertainty, while probing themes that would later shape his fiction: faith, doubt, the legacy of empire, and the pull of the “darkness” within the human heart. Candid, observant, and often self-questioning, this work offers both a vivid travelogue and a revealing portrait of the artist in formation.