Look on the brighter side...

The opening sentence in Botswana Time, the new book by Will Randall, the author of the much-praised Indian Summer, reads like a parody of travel writing &ldquoSliding slowly towards sleep, I closed eyes that stung with delicious heat-induced torpor.&rdquo  By the bottom of that first page we have a tin roof that &ldquoclattered and crackled&rdquo, &ldquofat, warm raindrops&rdquo, &ldquothe African sun&mdashsurely the fiercest in the world&rdquo, a &ldquopercussive rumble of sound&rdquo, and &ldquohill ranges of black, potent clouds rumbling and rolling.&rdquo  For all this exhaustive description&mdashand Randall is unable to pass an elephant without burbling about this &ldquocolossal, graceful beast&rdquo or its &ldquoluminously white tusks&rdquo&mdashthere is little perception at work here.

Randall gives the game away at the outset. Botswana Time, he announces in his dedication, &ldquois a book for optimists.&rdquo And sure enough he makes for a genial companion, always ready with a gentle quip, a jolly anecdote he&rsquos a bracing, Panglossian figure always eager to look on the bright side of life.

In many ways he and Botswana are made for each other. Botswana is a small, outrageously beautiful country with a lot to be pleased about. Four decades of unbroken civilian rule, progressive policies and diamonds has meant that Botswana&rsquos economy is one of Africa&rsquos most robust. Randall&rsquos portrait is flushed with warmth. But the &lsquoWooster in the bush&rsquo style is inimical to complexity. There are real people here, and a real country, but they&rsquore obscured in the good-natured fog that surrounds this book.