I was struck by shame that all my life I’d associated Angola with nothing but trauma, my perception shaped by years of the Angolan civil war, so that in my stupidity it came almost as a surprise to find ordinary life placidly going on there as it does in Prague and Windhoek and Milton Keynes.

My journey across ‘moving, magnificent’ Namibia

Vast horizons, rare animals and sublime night skies: a week-long journey across the country dazzles novelist Sarah Perry