the Last Safari - Hardcover

Alan Schofield

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0241120721 ISBN 13: 9780241120729

Publisher: Hamish Hamilton, 1987

Synopsis

Mark Shaw is a young architect living in London.One bitter winter day an exhausted man arrives on his doorstep. He has travelled from Nairobi to bring Mark a message. Mark’s father, Neil Shaw – a buccaneering figure, big game hunter, best selling novelist and womaniser – has been arrested for murder.Mark had been brought up in Spain after his mother had been killed on their remote estate in Kenya. Now he returns, to discover a dangerous situation on the lonely Plateau which both sets of his grandparents, together with one other family, the Donaldsons, had colonised in the 1920s. A feud has existed between the two families for many years and it is Neil’s contemporary, Martin Donaldson, who has been killed.Mark is urged by his father’s lawyer to find out exactly what happened that day. In doing so he uncovers Neil’s life, the hidden life of which his son knew almost nothing. It is a journey back in time.Paralleling this search is the story of Neil’s wish to turn the clock back in Africa; of the game sanctuary he creates and his obsession with freedom, symbolised by four lions with which he identifies. But the old Africa has gone and he cannot come to terms with the new. Finally there is the question of a murder thought to have been solved a long time ago.In seeking answers to all these questions the story moves from London to Kenya to southern Spain in the 1950s, to New York and back to Kenya. Alan Scholefield , who knows Africa well, is a masterly storyteller, whose gripping and convincing novels are unfailingly entertaining.Alan Scholefield was born in Cape Town in 1931 and was educated at Queen’s College, Queenstown, and the University of Cape Town. He now lives with his Australian wife, the novelist Anthea Goddard, in the south of England. They have three daughters. Most famous for his Macrae and Silver series, Scholefield has also written other novels, including Venom , which was made into a film in 1981.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

Scholefield (The Sea Cave) has turned an ordinary tale of "lusty" Africa into a compelling conflict of old Africa versus new, embodied in three generations of the Shaw and Donaldson families. While Neil Shaw, a former "white hunter" and faded writer in the Hemingway mold, wants to maintain his game reserve, his neighbor, Martin Donaldson, has turned his land into a cattle ranch, with the help of a Kenyan businessman and Neil's third ex-wife, Teresa. The Shaws and the Donaldsons, once friends and partners, now barely keep their dislike for each other in check, especially since the lions from Neil's game sanctuary prey on the Donaldson herds. Into this turmoil of hate and grudges comes Neil's son, Mark, who flies to Kenya from London after hearing that his father has been arrested for murdering Martin Donaldson. As he waits to see Neil, who suffers a minor heart attack in police custody, Mark learns much about his father that he never knew before (including the details of his mother's savage death at the hands of the Mau Mau). But the past is neither forgotten nor buried, and it finally rears up after a chance meeting that discloses to Neil a final and satisfying revelation. Scholefield's colorful, lean prose and well-fleshed characterizations deftly immerse readers in the veldt.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Scholefield's latest adventure yarn tells the story of white big-game hunter-turned-author Neil Shaw. Like the wild lions he so admires on his Kenyan game preserve, Shaw combines great strength of character, indolence, pride, selfishness, and ferocity when provoked. When Shaw is arrested for the murder of a neighbor, his estranged son Mark flies from London to help. By reviewing tapes of his father's reminiscences, Mark gains insight into the unique character of the man and learns that he is beset by the memory of his first wife's tragic death. Scholefield is able to develop sympathetic characters while at the same time portraying vivid action scenes. Recommended. William C. McCully, Park Ridge P.L . , Ill.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Hamish Hamilton
• Publication date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0241120721
• ISBN 13: 9780241120729
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 1