A Woman's Odyssey Into Africa

More about the author than about Africa, this unusual memoir tells of a woman who regenerates herself in midlife through three yearlong solo backpacking trips. Though the narrative is disorganized and the writing sometimes cliched, the story is often absorbing because the author is so intrepid. A burnt-out English teacher in a ``nightmare'' New York City high school, Lightfoot-Klein, with her children grown, her marriage disintegrating and her lingering health problems resolved, decided at 51 to trek through Africa. While in Sudan, she learned of the barbaric but widespread African custom of female genital excision; obsessed with the story and proud to meet the challenge of life in Sudan, she returned to work on her first book, Prisoners of Ritual: An Odyssey into Female Circumcision in Africa . She intersperses chapters on her background, including a particularly warped family and an invented Native American grandfather, with African adventures both inspiring and cautionary: dealing with the bureaucracy, finding lodgings at police stations, having sexual escapades, eating raw camel's liver and being raped if this happened to author; if not, stet on the beach in Kenya. (May)