With each mile he takes northwards, the poverty and corruption worsens and Theroux's spirits sink even further. Eventually he reaches Angola, a nation of immense mineral and oil wealth, which is run by a government that is simply "predatory, tyrannical, unjust, utterly uninterested in its people … and indifferent to their destitution and inhuman living conditions". The recent civil war that blighted the country for a decade has denuded it of all its wildlife, infrastructure and hope, Theroux discovers. Thus the Africa described in The Last Train to Zona Verde turns out to be an even harsher, more miserable, more depressing place than the one depicted in its predecessor Dark Star Safari. There have been "few improvements, many degradations," the author notes. And in the end, it all proves too much. But as a wake-up call (and possibly the author's travel-writing swansong), The Last Train to Zone Verde is an uncompromising, unsettling work.