No Picnic on Mount Kenya: A Daring Excape, A Perilous Climb | 
 enlarge | Author: Felice Benuzzi
Publisher: The Lyons Press
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 809830
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 248
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.7
ISBN: 1558218769
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.547241092
EAN: 9781558218765
ASIN: 1558218769
Publication Date: April 1, 1999
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Ethiopia, 1941. Felice Benuzzi was a junior officer in the Italian Colonial Service, stationed in Addis Ababa, when the British thwarted Mussolini's ambition to build a colonial empire in East Africa. Benuzzi, along with thousands of other Italians, was captured and interned in a POW camp near the foot of Mount Kenya, where he and his countrymen languished indefinitely, waiting out the war and the desperate boredom, passivity, and isolation of prison life. "In order to break the monotony," he writes, "one had only to start taking risks again." But the isolation of the camp precluded the possibility of escape to a neutral country: "I thought, then at least I shall stage a break in this awful travesty of life. I shall try to get out, climb Mount Kenya and return here." So begins No Picnic on Mount Kenya, a first-class adventure story full of courage, humor, and exquisite detail. Benuzzi and two fellow prisoners spent six months secretly hoarding food; sewing clothing, shoes, and tents; and scavenging for scrap metal to hammer into ice axes and crampons. After escaping, they braved the multiple risks of capture, wild animals (including elephants and rhinoceros), starvation, frigid weather, and some of the most challenging climbing conditions in Africa. The men ascended 16,300 feet to Mount Kenya's Point Lenana, hoisted a homemade flag, and then returned to the misery of the camp. Benuzzi and his comrades never cared that their freedom was fleeting: they climbed Mount Kenya to reaffirm their humanity in the face of a barbaric world war. The gallantry of this gesture sets No Picnic apart from typical mountaineering stories of risk and self reliance. --Svenja Soldovieri
Book Description
In No Picnic on Mount Kenya, Felice Benuzzi recounts one of the most bizarre and daring adventures of this century. In 1943, Benuzzi and two fellow Italian prisoners of war escaped from a British camp in equatorial East Africa with one goal--to climb the seventeen-thousand-foot Mount Kenya. Filled with suspense and humor, it is an extraordinary story that has earned its place as a masterpiece.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 7 more reviews...
 a great adventure story October 14, 2006
Felice Benuzzi wound up in a Second World War POW camp close to the foot of Mount Kenya, a mountain that is higher than the highest alp in Europe. Prison camps are boring; soon Benuzzi, who went on to become an ambassador in post-war Italy's diplomatic service, was dreaming of scaling the mountain he saw beyond the barbed wire of his confines.
Eventually he did break out, and with the help of two fellow prisoners and rudimentary mountain climbing equipment they had made in the prison camp, he and a fellow prisoner ascended one of Mount Kenya's peaks, where they planted an Italian flag. A great story of adventure and humanity that loses a little of its lyricism in its translation into English. Great reading for all ages.
 1/2 stars ... pretty good. February 27, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I enjoy escape stories & the first half of this book was a typical WW2 escape story. The story has humour throughout & their task - to climb Mount Kenya - was quite an undertaking. What I liked best was the author's personality / humour & seeing things from an Italian and African perspective. His descriptions of the types of people in the prison camp are awesome. Day to day camp life is well described also.
I think it took great guts to attempt what they did but to me the scariest parts were sleeping in the jungle with little or no shelter & no weapons. Who know's what type of beasts they may come across? I felt the second half of the book which describes more of the climb itself was more boring. When I got into this part I was mostly looking forward to finishing the book & getting onto something else. It is unique & I don't think in all the escape books I have read anyone has ever had their main intention be to escape back into their camp. That took a little bit of the interest away for me.
It is a good story & I think the author would be a very interesting person to meet but the book was just middle of the road as far as true adventure stories I have read.
 Made me feel as if I were there too... April 25, 2003
I really enjoyed this book. It sounds almost whimsical that POWs would go to all this trouble and face considerable personal danger to escape, climb a mountain, and then go right back to the prison camp, but the way Benuzzi describes it, it makes a certain sense. The painstaking process of preparing for the trip - which included all the risks and difficulties of a "typical" prison break plus the demands of an Alpine climb - is told in a matter-of-fact, rather dry fashion. (On nominating the third man for the party: "He had never climbed a mountain in his life. The only reason why we decided to try him was because he was universally thought to be mad as a hatter, and mad people were what we needed.") Benuzzi's descriptions of the scenes on the way up the mountain are glorious, and of the return to camp are funny and quite touching. A very enjoyable pocket-adventure story that deserves to be better known.
A breath of fresh air March 28, 2003
This book is a welcome change from all the peak bagging, egoistical, mountain-conquering books out there. The author talks so poetically about the beauty of the mountain , that its hard to remain unaffected. Their mission is extremely pure and simple - to climb Mt. Kenya, although some people might say that it was an irresponsible thing to do in the middle of war .... The truth is that its a fantastic description of their whole adventure, with graphic descriptions of the jungle and how they made it with POW rations and home-made climbing gear. A true mountaineering classic !
 Wonderful Adventure Flatly Told December 19, 2002
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
I'm a big fan of WWII prisoner of war tales, both real (The Long Walk, Ghost Soldiers, et al) and fictional (King Rat, Bridge on the River Kwai, et al), so I was intrigued by this account by an Italian of how he and two companions escaped their POW camp, climbed Mt. Kenya, and then snuck back into camp several weeks later. Unfortunately, while their adventure was undoubtedly remarkable, it never really comes alive in Benuzzi's book. I suspect much of the problem for me is that I know nothing about mountaineering and don't particularly find it interesting. The other difficulty I had was with the flatness of the prose, whether this is due to a weak translation or to Benuzzi's writing in a foreign language I don't know, but in any event, I found it rather tepid. So while I think the whole idea of his adventure is wonderful and in rather brilliant dark humor, I didn't find the telling equally so.
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