Two years after the publication of Mungo Park’s Travels in the Interior of Africa (1799), the claim by a German cabinet maker/joiner, Christian Friedrich Damberger, to have crossed the African continent on foot over a period of 16 years, from the Cape of Good Hope to Morocco, made for an instant bestseller. After the narrative was unmasked as a hoax, however, critical reception was particularly vitriolic in Britain. This article analyses the reviews in order to determine why the hoax caused such outrage. It emerges that this narrative presents a direct challenge to Banksian notions of travel writing. Furthermore, its portrayal of Africa and its peoples tends to subvert contemporary attitudes concerning inter-racial relationships, the idea of ‘going native’, and, importantly, the slave trade. The article then asks what type of truth the narrative might be generating, if not a strictly factual one.

中文翻译：

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一个虚假的真相？克里斯蒂安·丹伯格 (Christian Damberger) 的非洲愿景 (1801)

在芒戈·帕克的《非洲内陆游记》（1799 年）出版两年后，德国橱柜制造商/细木工克里斯蒂安·弗里德里希·丹贝格 (Christian Friedrich Damberger) 声称从开普敦徒步穿越非洲大陆 16 年好望到摩洛哥，立即畅销。然而，在叙述被揭露为骗局之后，批评的反应在英国尤其尖刻。本文分析了这些评论，以确定为什么这个恶作剧会引起如此愤怒。看来，这种叙述对班克斯的旅行写作观念提出了直接挑战。此外，它对非洲及其人民的描绘往往会颠覆当代关于种族间关系、“回归本土”的观念，以及更重要的是奴隶贸易的态度。