Swimming in Air is a travel memoir and a love story whose real subject is the invisible — the unexamined beliefs we carry about love, independence, and what we deserve — and what it takes for Africa, and loss, to finally make them visible.

He didn’t believe in love. She believed love came with an expiration date. They met in Munich in 1986 and agreed: no commitment.

Their relationship was like an Argentine tango, that rhythm of desire and doubt where one person moves forward, and the other pulls back, but always in each other’s arms.

Then they left everything behind and set off from Cairo to Cape Town on twenty dollars a day.

Some agreements weren’t meant to survive Africa.