The Last Banana began when the author visited his university friend Marios Ghikas, whose family farmed in Chaggaland, Tanzania. Anticipating nationalization, Marios invited Tucker to visit again to help him spend ‘the last banana’ of his ‘unremittable fortune’, and Tucker returned in 1972. These were the first of 16 African trips spanning 43 years. There were 180 Greeks in Chaggaland, but Nyerere’s policy of ‘returning’ land to the watu (people) destroyed this community. Three stayed on; Marios was one.

In this absorbing and elegantly written book, Tucker recalls conditions in equatorial Africa before the European ‘scramble’ for colonies. He reminds us of Livingstone’s vision of ending the slave trade by bringing ‘the 3 Cs’ (Commerce, Christianity and Civilization) to the interior of Africa and suggests that Greek settlement in Africa was an important, part of fulfilling Livingstone’s vision – a story previously untold in English. Tucker contrasts the moral force and fruits of the pioneer missionaries and explorers who brought Christianity to Africa with the triviality of modern travel and the surrealism of ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ expounded in Africa today.

Anyone reading this humane, intelligent account will be a great deal the wiser about not only East Africa, but also human naivete, folly and plain stupidity.

Robert Carver in The Independent, May 2010.

This remarkable and brilliant book...Shelby Tucker is that rare species of travel writer: an authentic adventurer of expansive Victorian self-confidence...

Michael Moran in The Tablet, July 2010.

Click this link for a television interview with the author.