La blanche

A redhead with a self-deprecating sense of humour, Lois Pryce is a sort of bike-borne Bridget Jones nearly intrepid despite herself. Why is she undertaking this exhausting 10,000-mile ride through 11 countries &mdash from Tunisia to Cape Town &mdash when she could happily swoon in the arms of Austin, her "wonderful companion and favourite person in the world" And isn&rsquot she woefully unprepared for the African sun, being as she is, white as a "Romanian vampire" While she leaves the first question unanswered, she bravely tackles the second by taking a trip to a sun-bed.

Armed with her sparkly crash helmet, 225cc trail bike and newly basted complexion, Pryce begins her journey in Tunis. She slogs across the Sahara with a troop of rally racers and across Algeria, Niger and Nigeria with a Belgian couple and their "gap-year philosopher" cousin. With quite remarkable courage, she then takes on the rest by herself. As she feared, her conspicuous status as &lsquoLa Blanche&rsquo leads to her being preyed on by Africans with big dreams and meagre means, and assaulted by an assortment of unsavoury men, including a drunk fisherman, an albino tramp with open sores, and a one-legged Congolese custom officer who, upon luring her into a darkened hangar, dispenses her a leery invitation to sit on his stump.

Pryce&rsquos narrative reads like an interminable dinnertime anecdote, recounted with an eager sense of humour and peppered with entertaining pop culture references. Lit-up sheep carcasses in Tunisia resemble a Damien Hirst installation, predatory Cameroonian girls sport skimpy outfits that&rsquod embarrass Jodie Marsh...

The book pays attention to the tiniest details &mdash like the upholstery and churlish staff of numerous embassies. Some passages &mdash such as how she was forced to surrender her packet of chocolate biscuits to a stoned, Kalashnikov-waving Congolese soldier thrum with fear and adrenaline. But much of the rest, alas, echoes her appraisal of a Niger truck driver, who was "more than happy to have a good moan in the ear of a stranger".