Kenya Series

The Kenya novels follow the Barclay family and the people connected to it from European exploration of the East African highlands into the twentieth-century crisis of colonial rule. The High Country begins with Adrian Barclay and Kurt von Schlieben, whose discovery of a supposed paradise becomes entangled with settlement, racial power and violence.

The Happy Valley shifts to Adrian’s descendants and the relationship between John Barclay and Joseph Kinshashu. Their friendship survives the First World War but is ultimately divided by land, African nationalism and the claim that settler ownership can be reconciled with justice for the Kikuyu population.