interesting

The subject, though interesting, can feel stretched over the book’s 250 pages. The historical records are sadly thin, which means Mr Wilson-Lee often resorts to what feels like speculative filler. Some of the links he makes are beyond tenuous—at one point he compares African elephants to the storm in “King Lear” on the grounds that both are “sublime grey objects”. The book sometimes strays far from both Shakespeare and Swahililand. But it has successfully told a lesser-known story of Africa, and it is a story worth knowing.