Ring the chief justice

International journalist John Lawrence takes the reader at kaleidoscopic speed through high drama and rib-tickling humour as he relives nearly twelve years of adventures in sub-Saharan Africa. His racy memoir swings from west coast to east coast, with a detour to Mauritius, as he vividly describes the everyday lives of both humble and famous Africans and the amazing array of animals that share this vast continent. Lawrence pays homage to the literary genius of Nigerian authors and is spellbound by the Kenyan landscape, described by the popular novelist Wilbur Smith as a microcosm of Africa. He survives an armed hold-up in Nairobi and a close shave with a hippopotamus that charges his small boat on a Kenyan lake. And he fears for his life, and that of his wife, when his elderly driver, who claims to be a prince, threatens to abandon them on a jungle road.