This is the chronicle of a six months collecting trip to the West African colony of British Cameroon - now Cameroon - that Durrell made with the highly regarded aviculturist and ornithologist John Yealland. Its combination of comic exaggeration and environmental accuracy, portrayed in Durrell's light, clever prose, made it a great success.

Toundi Ondoua, the rural African protagonist of Houseboy, encounters a world of prisms that cast beautiful but unobtainable glimmers, especially for a black youth in colonial Cameroon. It is written in the form of Toundi's captivating diary, discloses his awe of the white world and a web of unpredictable experiences.