Scottish Literary Connections to Africa

  • Cover scan of And Miles To Go Before I Sleep
    And Miles To Go Before I Sleep: A Scottish Vet In Africa Hugh Cran
    After three years working as a young vet in rural Aberdeenshire, Hugh Cran decided that it was time for a change. He got it. He took a post in Kenya and, 40 years later, he's still there, still working, still loving every challenging, unexpected moment.
  • Cover scan of The Complete McAuslan
    The Complete McAuslan George MacDonald Fraser
    Private McAuslan, the Dirtiest Soldier in the World, alias the Tartan Caliban, demonstrates his unfitness for service in The General Danced at Dawn, continues his disorderly advance in McAuslan in the Rough and ends with The Sheikh and the Dustbin.
  • Cover scan of Dark Flight
    Dark Flight Lin Anderson
    Stephen, a six-year-old boy, has vanished, his mother and grandmother horrifically murdered. At the scene forensic scientist Rhona MacLeod finds a chilling African talisman, made from the bones of a child. Can she decipher its meaning and track Stephen down before he becomes the next link in the killers' chain?
  • Cover scan of David Livingstone
    David Livingstone: Mission And Empire Andrew Ross
    David Livingstone was one of the supreme representatives of the British Empire whose reputation has swung between extremes of adulation and dismissal. This book is an account of Livingstone's life and his achievements.
  • Cover scan of Dr Livingstone, I Presume?
    Dr Livingstone, I Presume?: Missionaries, Journalists, Explorers And Empire Clare Pettitt
    The meeting between the American reporter Henry Morton Stanley and the Scottish missionary-explorer David Livingstone at Ujiji in 1871 has entered popular culture with this unforgettable phrase. But what actually happened there, when was the line said and why did the myth catch on so well?
  • Cover scan of The Fatal Sleep
    The Fatal Sleep Peter Kennedy
    The bite of the tsetse fly - a burning sting into the skin - causes a descent into violent fever and aching pains. Severe bouts of insomnia are followed by mental deterioration, disruption of the nervous system, coma and ultimately death. This sleeping sickness is one of Africa's major killers.
  • Cover scan of Forest Of Memories
    Forest Of Memories: Tales From The Heart Of Africa Donald Macintosh
    Donald MacIntosh's travels have taken him around the world during a working life which has spanned from between the war years until the 1980s. In this book, he recollects the characters and incidents he has encountered.
  • Cover scan of Freedom Spring
    Freedom Spring: Ten Years On
    This anthology grew out of a desire to leave behind a lasting Glasgow legacy of the ten years of freedom in South Africa and the many years of struggle against apartheid. What began as an idea for a commermorative programme became this inspirational, robu
  • Cover scan of Greenmantle
    Greenmantle John Buchan
    Here, one of John Buchan's finest creations, Richard Hannay, South African mining engineer and war hero, undertakes a perilous mission to pursue the elusive 'Greenmantle'. His success or failure could change the outcome of World War 1.
  • Cover scan of Horseman Of The Veldt
    Horseman Of The Veldt Malcolm Archibald
    Drew Selkirk, newly commissioned, is given his own irregular horse group, and uses his Borders horse skills and cunning strategies to pursue new adventures in the Boer War.
  • Cover scan of How I Found Livingstone
    How I Found Livingstone Henry M. Stanley
    Henry Stanley describes his search for David Livingstone, a Scottish missionary-explorer working in Africa during the Victorian era.
  • Cover scan of In Search Of Willie Patterson
    In Search Of Willie Patterson: A Scottish Soldier In The Age Of Imperialism Fred Reid
    This title tells the story of Fred Reid's quest to understand the grandfather he never knew, a soldier who fought in the East African campaign during World War I. In telling it, he is frank about the great pains a blind man must take to overcome many barriers to research.
  • Cover scan of Journey Into Africa
    Journey Into Africa: The Life And Death Of Keith Johnston, Scottish Cartographer And Explorer (1844-79) James McCarthy
    This true and dramatic story begins with the finding of the last expedition diary of a forgotten Edinburgh cartographer - keith Johnston. The diary was lying in the Royal Geographical Society of Scotland's storeroom and concerns his last, fatal expedition into the interior of Africa.
  • Cover scan of The Last King Of Scotland
    The Last King Of Scotland Giles Foden
    'The Last King of Scotland' combines elements of thriller noir with brilliant comedy, in the grand tradition of Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene and, more recently, William Boyd. Serious concerns are mixed with extravagant spectacle.
  • Cover scan of Livingstone
    Livingstone Tim Jeal
    David Livingstone is revered as one of the world's greatest explorers and missionaries and as the first European to cross Africa. This biography reveals the man behind the myth, one capable of ruthless cruelty as well as self-sacrifice.
  • Cover scan of The Man-Leopard Murders
    The Man-Leopard Murders: History And Society In Colonial Nigeria David Pratten
    This volume is an account of murder and politics in Africa, and an historical ethnography of southern Annang communities during the colonial period.
  • Cover scan of Mungo Park
    Mungo Park Mark Duffill
    The author recounts the story of the courageous Scottish surgeon who travelled to unexplored parts of Africa at the end of the 18th century. Park was invited to head expeditions to the most dangerous regions, surviving fever, robbery and capture.
  • Cover scan of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
    The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Alexander McCall Smith
    The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency is one woman, Precious Ramotswe, working out of a breezeblock office in Botswana. A cross between Kinsey Millhone and Miss Marple, Precious makes an unlikely heroine as she embarks on a very African mystery.
  • Cover scan of Prester John
    Prester John John Buchan
    After his father's death our hero sets off to make his fortune in South Africa. He gets tangled up in an African uprising and rumours he hears along his journey make him suspect that his destination may not be as predictable as he has supposed.
  • Cover scan of The Race For Timbuktu
    The Race For Timbuktu: In Search Of Africa's City Of Gold Frank T. Kryza
    A story set against the backdrop of the European exploration of Africa, this is the remarkable true story of Major Alexander Gordon Laing and the race to discover Timbuktu during the early part of the nineteenth century, an era when the African continent was still largely uncharted.
  • Cover scan of The Road To Timbuktu
    The Road To Timbuktu: Down The Niger On The Trail Of Mungo Park Tom Fremantle
    In the summer of 1795 a young Scot, Mungo Park docked on the Gambia River. So began an extraordinary journey of exploration in West Africa. Tackling fever, starvation, wild beasts & natives, Park soldiered on to his prize, the mysterious Niger. In this book, Tom Fremantle follows the same route.
  • Cover scan of A Sailor In The Sahara
    A Sailor In The Sahara: The Life And Travels In Africa Of Hugh Clapperton, Commander RN Jamie Bruce-Lockhart
    Jamie Bruce Lockhart has retraced the footsteps of explorer Hugh Clapperton's footsteps and takes the reader through forest, desert and extremes of climate. In this biography the reader witnesses Clapperton's adventures, hopes, fears, misfortunes and his ultimately lonely fate.
  • Cover scan of Sekem
    Sekem: A Sustainable Community In The Egyptian Desert Ibrahim Abouleish
    In 1977, Ibrahim Abouleish formed the community of Sekem on desert land, 60 kilometres north east of Cairo. Nearly thirty years later, the community continues to go from strength to strength, bringing real social change to the region. This is Abouleish's own account of the story of Sekem.
  • Cover scan of Selim Aga
    Selim Aga: An East African Slave's Odyssey James McCarthy
    Selim Aga was eight years old when he was abducted from the Nuba Mountains of Sudan and sold into slavery and auctioned 2000 miles away in Egypt to the highest bidder. Born around 1827, Selim was killed in a war in Liberia in 1875. Here, the author has pieced together the life of this remarkable man, using Selim's own narrative.
  • Cover scan of A Sunday At The Pool In Kigali
    A Sunday At The Pool In Kigali Gil Courtemanche
    This novel is a cathartic denunciation of poverty, ignorance, global apathy and media blindness. It is both a poignant love story and a stirring hymn to humanity.
  • Cover scan of Travels In The White Man's Grave
    Travels In The White Man's Grave Donald Macintosh
    Donald Macintosh's reminiscences of his life as a forester in the remotest areas of West Africa reflect the hardiness and sense of adventure of a Gaelic-speaking Scot. The white man's grave was an apt name for a very inhospitable region.
  • Cover scan of Travels Into The Interior Of Africa
    Travels Into The Interior Of Africa Mungo Park
    Mungo Park, a surgeon, was sent by the African Association to explore West Africa & open trade routes along the Niger River to the fabled, gold-rich Timbuctu. His record of his travels brought a new image of Africa to the European public, though the continent claimed his life.
  • Cover scan of Tsotsi
    Tsotsi Athol Fugard
  • Cover scan of White Knees, Brown Knees
    White Knees, Brown Knees: Suez Canal Zone 1951-1954, The Forgotten Years Douglas J. Findlay
    In the Suez Canal Zone between 1951 and 1954 there were some 250,000 Service personnel deployed. The MoD admits to 613 British burials in the Suez. In this book, Douglas Findlay tells how the real death toll was more than 1000.