White Highlands, John McGhie
White Highlands, John McGhie
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

White Highlands

Author: John McGhie

Narrator: David Thorpe

Unabridged: 18 hr 2 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/06/2017

Categories: Fiction


Synopsis

Shortlisted for the Author's Club First Novel Award

'Remarkable and redemptive . . . like the best of John le Carre' A. L. Kennedy

Kenya, 1952, a colony on the edge. Settlers drink sundowners on the veranda but the servants can't be trusted. Beyond manicured lawns, in the dark of the forest, freedom is stirring.

Johnny Seymour has seen too much war and seeks solace photographing East African wildlife. But when isolated white families are slaughtered by Mau Mau gangs, the British respond brutally and Johnny is reluctantly pulled into the horror.

After his African driver Macharia disappears, Johnny is forced to confront shocking truths about his own country and ask how far he'll go to help a friend.

Nearly sixty years later, disgraced young barrister Sam Seymour knows nothing about her grandfather. Even his name is taboo. All she understands is that Johnny did something so awful that his only son - her father - had to be rescued from Kenya.

Now as veteran Mau Mau fighters demand reparations for past sins, she's been offered a chance to unpeel history and discover why.

In a narrative spanning the generations, White Highlands follows Sam and Johnny as they confront the might of the British state. One man stands in both their way - Grogan Littleboy, a ruthless colonial survivor who'll do anything to defeat Mau Mau, past and present.

A startlingly original novel set in both the present day and Kenya in the 1950s during the Mau Mau uprising - one of the least known and darkest episodes in British colonial history.

About John McGhie

John McGhie has been an investigative journalist for the BBC, Channel Four News and the Observer, where he was Political Correspondent. He made the highly-acclaimed BBC documentary about Mau Mau, White Terror.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Keith

Uhuru! John McGhie’s novel is a thriller set in Kenya over two time periods, the 1950s Mau Mau rebellion and the British counter insurgency measures (now there’s a euphemism!) and in 2008 when there were calls for compensation from the UK by Kenyans affected by such measures. I think McGhie’s novel is......more

This book kept me turning pages well into the night. The violence depicted is shocking but the story is a powerful historical narrative that taught me a whole lot about Kenya's struggle for independence, the imperfections of people, and the wish to persevere in making things right.......more

Goodreads review by Simon

White Highlands by John McGhie, published by Little, Brown 2017 Publishers Little Brown are promoting this debut novel as a “literary thriller”. Thrillers, literary or otherwise, only work if they are credible and ideally the reader should be swept along on an authentic cast of characters in a convin......more

A really well written, gripping and vivid novel about a dark period in both Britain and Kenya's recent history. Those Brits doing it again - undermining the locals and destroying their way of life, with the locals fighting back. Author John McGhie is a journalist, having worked for the BBC and Obser......more


Quotes

Remarkable and redemptive . . . like the best of John le Carre


Awards

  • Authors' Club Best First Novel Award