"A tour de force—brilliantly structured, surprising, humane, and suspenseful."—Elaine Showalter "Worldly, witty, enjoyable, impressive."—Doris Lessing Vanessa Henman, a plucky but accident-prone white writer, flies from London to Uganda for a Pan-African writers’ conference. She also intends to pay her former cleaner, Mary Tendo, a surprise visit. But Mary—now the executive housekeeper of the Sheraton Hotel in Kampala—has her own agenda, and she has secretly summoned Vanessa’s beloved ex-husband Trevor, a plumber, to her home village to help build a well. The conference over, Vanessa sets off alone on a safari to the distant Bwindi Impenetrable Forest to see the mountain gorillas. Farce teeters on the edge of something much darker when Vanessa quarrels with her driver and a bloody war closes in on Bwindi from Congo. Can anyone save her? was chosen as one of ’s original "Best Young British Novelists." She has published many novels to great acclaim, including , shortlisted for the Orange and IMPAC prizes, and and , which was longlisted for the Orange Prize. She was the first female chair of the Royal Society of Literature, and she lives in London.