Africa - and I was 19

Leif Lorentzon

Leif Lorentzon, a Swedish retired teacher and literary scholar, living in Stockholm, here tells of when he 19 years old, alone hitch-hiked through Africa for a year. After that year he lived for two years in Kenya in the late 1970s. Back in Stockholm he began reading comparative literature and did his post-graduate research in African literature. He finished a PhD on the Ghanaian writer Ayi Kwei Armah in 1999, and later partook in both Swedish and international research projects and conferences, particularly in Africa. He has also published several scholarly papers in academic journals and was for long part of the editorial board of Karavan, a Swedish literary journal dedicated to literature outside of the West. After having retired from teaching and scholarly work he has here written of his year on the hippie-road in Africa.