Assassinating Shakespeare: The Confessions of a Bard in the Bush

In 1976, Thomas Goltz, then a naive twenty-two-year-old lad from North Dakota, worked his way around Africa putting on one-man 'Shakespeare in the Streets' performances. His first port of call was war-torn Ethiopia. The rest of this mad two-year romp through the Dark Continent logically follows from there...Half a life-time later, with highly acclaimed 'Post-Soviet' books on Azerbaijan, Georgia and Chechnya under his belt and teaching in the higher education system of Montana, Goltz's first book continued to gather dust on a shelf in his study. That 'orphan' was Assassinating Shakespeare. Finally published by an obscure house in London in 2006, to rave reviews. "The coming-of-age of this particular young man from Fargo, N.D.,couldn't have been that funny at the hitchhiking through countries at war (with one another and themselves), being mugged for his glasses, sleeping in the rough, doing time in jail, being ditched by an adored hooker, falling very ill... But with the benefit of hindsight and an exquisite sense of the absurd, Thomas Goltz has turned his memories of a post-drama-school tour of Africa in the late 1970s into an insanely entertaining travel book." -- The New York Times . "Assassinating Shakespeare is packed with hilarious anecdotes, such as Goltz’s doped up performance after a cocktail of travel vaccinations, or the time he terrified the kids at an asylum for the mentally ill with his puppets. But beyond the perilous and the funny, Goltz taps into every emotion at just the right pitch. His understanding of love, lust, the beauty of the African landscape, and his own wild, motiveless instincts, show a man well attuned to his experiences."-- LitCrits.com "Many hippies who travelled the world smoking dope and hanging out in Third World countries in the 1970s could barely remember their names by the time they returned home. Not so Thomas Goltz, who was hardly the average backpacker. Between 1976 and 1978, in his early twenties, Goltz deserted America and travelled throughout Africa, briefly visiting Ethiopia, hitchhiking to Cape Town and finally back to Cairo, all the while performing his one-man “Bard in the Bush” Shakespeare recitals—sometimes to great acclaim (he is mentioned in newspapers and became a mini-celebrity in apartheid South Africa), and sometimes to deafening silence (his first show at a strip bar in Mombasa was such a failure that he was thrown out by bouncers)." --(London) Times Literary Supplement “İ was thrilled entertained amused and yes occasionally shocked by Goltz’s youthful adventures and indiscretions in post-colonial Africa. A true delight. Not to be missed.” --Valerie Hemingway , author of Running With The Bulls “The very definition of literate adventure. I laughed at length!” --Tim Cahill , author of Lost In My Own Backyard, Jaguars Ripped My Flesh, etc. “The funniest history book I’ve ever read.” --Margot Kidder , actor and activist