b opoikck
Pepnnıiec’sk
FRANCE FREEMAN
Wilbur Smith
Dark Continent provides
big ideas for author
JOE PAR TRIDGE
By J. Rentilly
TO MOST OF US, Africa is still a million worlds
away. It’s the stuff of ancient, elemental happenings,
racial divide and devastating ethnic struggles, largely
relegated to textbooks on the one hand, the foundation for celebrity fund-raising and soapboxing on
the other.
To best-selling author Wilbur Smith, the continent is not only home, but the richest source of inspiration for which an author could ever wish. Smith
has penned more than two dozen novels, including
River God, this month’s Book Buyer’s Pick, that explore, celebrate, dissect and personalize Africa, its people and history.
“I am at heart a nomad, and I get restless if I stay
too long in one place,” confides the 74-year-old Smith,
son of a mining contractor and a homemaker.
“However, Africa is where I leave my heart. Africa is
always the well and font of my inspiration.”
Born and raised in a remote part of Africa in
the country that is now Zambia, Smith absorbed
his family’s colorful involvements in the continent’s
history. C.S. Forester (Horatio Hornblower) and
H. Rider Haggard (King Solomon’s Mines) provided
major inspiration for his own creative writing. Smith
has been a fervent fan of Haggard’s swashbuckling
adventures since his mother first read them to him
in his childhood, importing the books from a small
dealer 500 miles away from the isolated land on
which the family lived.
In his teen years, Smith discovered the writings
of John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway, whose
Green Hills of Africa, Smith claims, “sung to my
African heart and gave me an insight into the
writer’s mind and novelistic techniques.”
In his early 20s, Smith, then a divorced father of
two and miserable in his work as a tax man, decided
to try his hand at fiction. He penned several novels,
which failed to capture the interest of publishers. At
last, in 1964, he fashioned a literary hero, Sean
Courtney, based on his grandfather—“a machine-gunner with prodigious handlebar mustaches”—
amid an action-packed, historically resonant tale of
gold mining, African warfare and family scandal.
The resulting novel, When the Lion Feeds, launched
Smith’s career.
“My African roots go very deep, as my ancestors
on both sides of the family were traders, explorers,
hunters and soldiers in Africa,” he says. “I learned
firsthand what it was like in this continent’s early
days, and worked them into the novels that began
my career as a published author.”
After devoting nearly two decades and 13 novels
“chasing” the centuries-spanning adventures of the
Courtney clan, Smith decided to turn his literary
ambitions to tales of ancient Egypt with River God.
The change of pace initially outraged his legions of
international fans. It is perhaps testament to Smith’s
abilities as a storyteller that those naysayers were
won over, along with millions of new readers, making Smith’s Egypt novels his best-selling.
Smith calls his Egyptian series—River God and
its sequels, The Seventh Scroll, Warlock and the latest,
The Quest—his essential achievement, a harmonic,
deeply romantic, white-knuckle saga that resonates
for him, personally, for its “haunting setting, and
characters who love and hate and fight and succeed
and fail as we do today. It’s timeless in those ways,
and readers around the world seem to agree with
me, for which I am very, very grateful.” C
J. Rentilly is a Los Angeles–based journalist who
writes about film, music and literature.
Pennie Clark Ianniciello
Costco Book Buyer
WHO NEEDS summer
blockbuster films when
the right book can provide
readers with more adventure, laughs or passion
than a movie ever could?
(And don’t get me started
on all of the extra details
found in books versus
films!) If you’re looking for
action-packed fiction, I
suggest Wilbur Smith’s
River God. It’s such a
sweeping story that it can
only be described with the
words “epic” and “grand.”
The novel stars a
eunuch slave, a pharaoh
and a beautiful young girl.
It also features torrid love
affairs, political upheaval
and exile. River God is
available at most Costco
warehouses and at
costco.com. C
Signed book
giveaway
COSTCO HAS 10 copies of Wilbur
Smith’s River God, with signed
bookplates, to give away. To enter,
print your name, membership
number, address and daytime
phone number on a postcard or
letter and send it to: Wilbur Smith,
The Costco Connection, P.O. Box
34088, Seattle, WA 98124-1088, or
fax it to (425) 313-6718.
No purchase is necessary.
Only current Costco members are
eligible to win. One entry per
household.
Entries must be
received or post-
marked by June
1, 2007. Winners
will be randomly
selected and not i-
fied by mail on or
before July 2, 2007.
The value of the
prize is $7.99. Void where prohib-
ited. Winners are responsible for
all applicable federal, state and
local taxes. The decision of the
judges is final. Employees of
Costco or St. Martin’s Press and
their families are not eligible.
