“A charming love triangle in Nairobi, Kenya, forms the center of a novel that manages to be both sweet and gripping.” —Publishers Weekly
“A lighthearted novel about birding and a wager to win the right to call a woman for a date.”
—Kirkus
“While the reader is pulled along by the suspense of the contest, the glorious sights, sounds, and smells of Nairobi provide lovely rest stops along the way.” —STARRED, Library Journal
A GUIDE TO THE BIRDS OF EAST AFRICA
a novel
By Nicholas Drayson
In A Guide to the Birds of East Africa, Nicolas Drayson, delivers a beguiling story that does for contemporary Kenya and its 1,000 species of birds what Alexander McCall Smith’s Ladies Detective series does for Bostwana.
For the past three years, the widower Mr. Malik has been secretly in love with Rose Mbikwa, a woman who leads the weekly bird walks sponsored by the East Africa Ornithological Society. Just as Malik is getting up the nerve to invite Rose to the Nairobi Hunt Club Ball (the premier social occasion of the Kenyan calendar), who should pop up but Malik’s nemesis from his old school days. So begins the competition: whoever can identify the most species of birds in one week’s time gets the privilege of asking the object of his affection to the ball.
Kenya is wildlife heaven and Drayson’s descriptions make you long to travel there. But the author turns an eagle eye on the foibles and follies of the people and politicians who roam the East African landscape. Readers looking for winning fiction that delivers wit and wisdom need look no further than in the pages of this novel.
This is a novel with an irresistible premise that is winning fans the world over; rights have been sold in eight countries.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
NICHOLAS DRAYSON has written extensively about wildlife and natural history; he is also the author of Confessing a Murder, which was hailed by Booklist for its “view of Darwin never before seen.” An Englishman by birth, Drayson lived in Nairobi for two years. He now lives in Australia, where he received a Ph.D. from the University of New South Wales.
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A Guide to the Birds of East Africa by Nicolas Drayson
Pub. Date: September 18, 2008; Price: $22; Pages: 208; ISBN-13: 978-0-547-152585
