Once it seemed to Kathleen Healy that Africa was empty and all of it belonged to her. An aviator, big game hunter and knitting devotee, who once boxed three rounds with Ernest Hemingway, she would land her plane wherever and whenever she chose. She was free with her favours too, and her multitude of lovers embodied the experiences of whites in Africa, whose sorry history began with Empire and ended with their hasty departure.

My Mother's Lovers is an epic tragicomedy, as dark as the European romancing of Africa, Bitingly funny, outrageously inventive and peopled with a fantastical cast of characters, it shows how the hunger to be loved and to belong affects us all. It is Christopher Hope's masterwork.