Rules of the Wild

A novel that reads like a reportage, almost a documentary, on contemporary (the Nineties) life in Kenya for the small and influential (but not rich) community of “white Kenyans”: some native of Kenya, some adoptive sons and daughters of the country that invented the safari a century ago and that is the main hub for all news organizations in the continent. So, reporters, conservationists, dreamers, adventures, misfits, eccentrics populate this hugely evocative and partially autobiographical book that has some of the best “sound bites” on the question we are often asked: Why You Love Africa?

Not many books, fiction or nonfiction, have accurately captured the crazy world of the 1990s expat community of Kenya — the journalists, diplomats, do-gooders, conservationists, backpackers, and erstwhile adventurers. But Francesca Marciano does so masterfully here. Set against the backdrop of the turmoil of the ‘90s, with the Somalia intervention, the civil war in Sudan, and the Rwandan genocide, Marciano takes a simple tried and true story of a woman torn between two lovers — one of them a jaded British newspaper correspondent — to paint a vivid portrait of contemporary Africa, its tragedies and boundless natural beauty, and the… show more.