Back in print, the "masterful" (The New York Times Book Review) account of an American in West Africa.

In Out of Africa Isak Dinesen writes of Kenya: "Up in this high air you breathed easily, drawing in a vital assurance and lightness of the heart. In the highlands you woke up in the morning and thought: Here I am, where I ought to be". Of my five-hundred off mornings in the Togolese highlands I woke up hung over, bathed in sweat, hungry, blowing on an extinguished lamp instead of turning off my alarm, mildly at ease, or mildly anxious. But never where I ought to be.

Here is a frank, moving, extremely vivid account of contemporary African life for anyone whose curiosity extends beyond the limits of Out of Africa. Stationed as a Peace Corps instructor in the village of Lavie (the name means "wait a little more") in tiny underdeveloped Togo, George Packer portrays his own schooling at the hands of an unforgettable array of villagers -- peasants, chiefs, charlatans, children, market women, cripples, crazies, and those who, having lost or given up much of their traditional identity and fastened their hopes on "development", find themselves trapped between the familiar repetitions of rural life and the chafing monotony of waiting for change.

The Village of Waiting is a contemporary classic of travel literature, a must-read for anyone interested in Africa today.