There have been many books- and many good books- about Africa, but
none quite like this one. For here is a section of Kenya, the wild
Kikuyu country, in 1913, as it made its unforgettable impression on
a child of six. That she was an extraordinarily aware child and
that her memory, while phenomenal, has been reenforced by renewing
her intimate relations with the country she learned to love, does
not lessen the impact this story of her African childhood leaves on
the reader. For here is Africa- not an Africa set in contrast with
Europe (for Robin and Tilly, her parents, were English)- but an
Africa deeply experienced with all a child's senses, with her
imagination, with her complete acceptance. Even the interrelations
of the adults, recorded in conversations remembered, if not wholly
understood at the time, come through the child's understanding. The
natives became her friends: her pets included a couple of
chameleons, a sturdy and scarred pony, a wild duiker. Her stories
were their myths; her friends cannibals, pygmies and the Kikuyus
themselves; she noted the eccentricities of some of the white
neighbors, a velvet upholstered couch and a grand piano in a dirt
floored cabin. But it is Africa that is the motivating factor, an
Africa with its extremes of beauty and ugliness, quivering heat and
crudities, wildness and violence. There is nothing here of politics
and exploration. It is simply Africa experienced. (Kirkus Reviews)
In an open cart Elspeth Huxley set off with her parents to travel to Thika in Kenya. As pioneering settlers among the Kikuyu people, they built a house of grass, ate off a damask cloth spread over packing cases and discovered - the hard way - the world of the African.
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