The African Safari Papers, documentary filmmaker Robert Sedlack’s first novel, is the fictional record of 19-year-old Richard Clark’s journey through Kenya with his alcoholic father and psychologically precarious mother. Young Richard intends to write a gonzo travelogue – he’s brought a suitcase full of hash oil and heroin along for the trip. But the story that emerges is altogether smarter and more sinister than some sort of “Fear and Loathing in Nairobi.”

The Clarks, individually and collectively, are on the verge of collapse, and the family may not survive the safari, let alone the journey through their past that the safari precipitates. At times The Safari Papers threatens to become a reworking of Heart of Darkness, with Africa acting as a vast amplification of the protagonist’s psyche, but again the book is smarter than that. Africa remains obstinately and realistically Africa.

A brief encounter with a cave-dwelling shaman hints at an exotic turn, but the encounter is abortive, and the idea that African spirituality might provide a panacea for the family’s modern malaise is hastily abandoned. This is one of the book’s best moments – it makes the reader acutely aware of wanting the story to find a cure for the Clarks’ situation, or at least make it meaningful. One begins to sympathize with Richard.

This is quite a trick because Richard is not an immediately likeable character. Sarcastic, alternately self-loathing and self-righteous, and prone to sophomoric philosophizing, he is sometimes a tiresome guide. Nevertheless, his story says some important things about the ways we make sense of the world, particularly about the dangers of voyeurism – both the voyeurism of rich white tourists and the voyeurism of reading. The climax combines the two forms with an outrageous flourish that would look ridiculous coming from a less able writer, but in Sedlacks’ hands is bizarrely powerful.