Featured on The Book Show on Sky Arts on 5 March 2009.
This is a very enoyable mix of comedy and danger. Through a series of errors, an accident-prone writer attending a writers' conference in Uganda finds herself caught up in a war-zone. Maggie Gee handles the elements of farce and more serious issues with an expert touch.
Vanessa Henman, a plucky but accident-prone white writer, flies from London to Uganda for an African writers' conference. She also means to visit her former cleaner, Ugandan Mary Tendo, now the successful Executive Housekeeper of Kampala's up-market Sheraton Hotel. But Mary has her own agenda: her son Jamil is missing, and she has secretly summoned Vanessa's beloved ex-husband Trevor, a plumber, to her home village to build a new well. Vanessa sets off alone on safari to distant Bwindi Impenetrable Forest to see the mountain gorillas. But she quarrels with her driver and a bloody war closes in on Bwindi from Congo. Can anyone save her? Will Mary Tendo find her son? One of her strongest novels to date...fast-moving, energetic, constantly surprising' Hilary Mantel Maggie Gee has never written better' Rose Tremain A tour de force - brilliantly structured, surprising, humane, and suspenseful' Elaine Showalter Brilliant...just brilliant...this book deserves to be published in every language' Hillary Jordan 'Executed with a lovely, light touch ... an immensely enjoyable novel.' Lionel Shriver, Daily Telegraph 'Worldy, witty, enjoyable, impressive' Doris Lessing 'Sparky, funny and terrifically entertaining' Guardian
Maggie Gee was chosen as one of Granta's original 'Best Young Novelists'. She has published many novels to great acclaim, including The White Family, which was shortlisted for the 2002 Orange Prize for Fiction and for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2004; and The Flood, which was longlisted for the 2004 Orange Prize. She is the first female chair of the Royal Society of Literature, and lives in London.
