It’s an autobiography by Corinne Hofmann, on how she leaves her safe world in Switzerland when she is hit by the big passion. She falls in love with a Samburu warrior, Lketinga, and decides to live with him and his family in the African countryside. She stays there for four years, gets married, overcomes illnesses and cultural diversion and creates her own everyday life there. At first the cultural differences are exciting and intriguing for her, later they become the base for many fights and misunderstandings between her and her husband. Four years of passion, love, hardship, jealousy and culture clashes. An interesting base for a book.

We get to follow her everyday life for four years; the good, the bad and everything in between. The book is written in a simple language and it’s not very thick so it’s a very quick read. However, while interesting, it leaves something to be desired. Descriptions. Descriptions are lacking, both of surroundings and the people. After reading a book that takes place for four years in Kenya, I have no idea what the place looks like until I saw the pictures in the middle of the book. And those pictures where just of the camp where the couple lived, nothing on the towns and other places they visited; I had to use Wikipedia for those. And I know nothing of the people. Well, I do, but it’s almost to the point of caricatures, where one part of the personality is high-lighted. For the first half of the book Lketinga is beautiful, but Corinne seems to be driven by passion rather than love, for the second half he is reduced to a controlling, jealous man, even though Corinne talks about how she still loves him, it is very hard to, he has been reduced to a one-dimensional person.

The book is more a line-up of people and situations, not a description of the people and the places. Both things are needed to make a book interesting and captivating, so therefore the book is only half-way there. Because to me, if I read a book that takes place in Africa, particularly in a part of Africa that is not often featured in moves or television, I had hoped to know more about the place, more about the surroundings, what does it look like there? Why do they have the ceremonies that we feel are strange? How do the people feel about the white woman wanting to live there? Some questions are answered, and in detail, whereas the questions about the bigger picture are left unanswered.

The story is interesting, too bad the writing and narration leaves things to be desired.