JOHN HABWE’S SAFARI YA LAMU (2011) AS A TRAVELOGUE

Abstract

The genre of travelogue may be regarded almost as old as the human civilization. Iain Manley in his survey of the genre (Manley 2011) traces the history of travelogue in the world literature from The Epic of Gilgamesh (13 th -7 th centuries BC), Homer’s Odyssey (8 th century BC), accounts of ancient travelers, like the Greeks Arrianus and Pausanius (1-2 centuries), the Chinese Faxian and Xuanzang (5 th and 7 th centuries), to the medieval texts of the venetian Marco Polo (13 th century) and Arabian traveler Ibn Batutta (14 th century), Christopher Columbus of Spain (15 th century), and Fernao Mendes Pinto of Portugal (16 th century AD). Key words: John Habwe, travelogue, Lamu, Safari