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Discussion Questions
1. Over the course of the novel, Rachelthough always one of the more progressive charactersdevelops a
more nuanced, less naive view of the impact of imperialism and racism in Kenya. How does this happen?
Which characters and events are most influential in this transformation?

2. Were you surprised by the romance between Rachel and Michael? Why, or why not? What does each see
in the other? How does their relationship develop and grow?

3. Discuss the role of memory in the novel. How does the past come to bear on Rachels aspirations, values,
fears, and triumphs? How might Michaels perception of the past differ from Rachels?

4. How does the legacy of World War II figure into the story?

5. Consider the reference to the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel in the novel. How is Rachels story similar?
How is it different? Do you feel any sympathy for Robert, Rachels father, or for Sara, his mistress?

6. Rachels home, Kisima, is located in rural northern Kenya and is so isolated that the closest neighboring
farmhouse is an hour away. What impact does this setting have on the story? Why was it important for
this story to be set there, rather than in a metropolitan area like Nairobi?

7. Much of the novel is concerned with imbalances of power and the fight for control and dominance.
What relationships and institutions illustrate this theme? How do various characters try to exert control
over Rachel? How do the European settlers try to control the African natives?

8. Discuss the importance of some of the smaller characters, such as Harold, Jim the cook, Kahiki, Nate
Logan, and Lillian Markham. What does each add to the story?

9. The novel is not only a love story and bildungsroman but also a gripping and tense depiction of a
turbulent moment in history. How did the author build the suspense in the story? Which were the most
heart-pounding moments, and why?

10. Near the end of the story, Rachel is involuntarily committed to a mental institution because of her affair
with Michael. What do these scenes convey about the function of asylums in British colonies in the 1950s?

11. In the postscript, Jennifer McVeigh quotes a historian who notes that only thirty-two European settlers
were actually killed in the Mau Mau rebellion. Yet the European characters in the novel treat the Mau Mau
as a mighty threat to their own safety. What accounts for this discrepancy? Do you see any parallels to how
rebellious and subversive groups, especially those whose members are mostly not white, are perceived today?
 I n He r O w n Wo r d s
by Jennifer McVeigh

This story had its beginnings in a

small, battered red canvas suitcase.
It was handed to me in an unassuming office in Piccadilly by
a man my father knew, and when he gave it to me I had no
premonition that my life was about to change. Perhaps you
can do something with it, he said, tapping the dusty lid of the
suitcase. It belonged to my grandmother. I took it from him
somewhat reluctantly the contents were clearly important
to him, and I was hesitant to be their keeper.

Sitting on the Tube on my way home, I inspected the

suitcase. It was small enough to sit on my lap. There was
Dorrie McVeigh

a handwritten label on the front that read simply: After

my death. I slid open the rusted iron buckles. Inside, the
suitcase smelled musty, and faintly intimate in the way that
old people sometimes smell, and the floral fabric lining was
shredding at the edges. At the top of a pile of papers was a
jumble of photographs, each one giving a picture-book tour of Kenya: his grandmothers house in
the Rift Valley on the edge of Lake Nakuru; palm trees blowing in the breeze on the shores of the
Indian Ocean; a lion oozing a casual sexual easerubbing necks with a lioness. Come away with
me, and be my bride, she had written on the back.

These images stirred a familiar longing. I have been in love with Kenya my whole life. I grew
up in England as a tomboy, happier making blood brothers in the woods than painting my nails
red. I longed for adventure real adventureand spent my weekends camped in an old army
tent in the garden, where the dawn light filtered through holes in the canvas (were they bullet
holes or cigarette burns?). When I was twelve my father took me to East Africa on safari. We
rode horses across the Mara, camping at night under a sky glittering with stars, listening to the
low grunts of a lion carrying far across the plains. We galloped alongside herds of zebra, clouds
blackening into storm the grasslands lit up beneath to an iridescent gold, and I remember
thinkingas my horse pounded under methat there could never be anywhere in the
world as beautiful as this. We chased ostrich, andon a hot daystripped the saddles off our
sweat-soaked horses and pushed them deep into a lake, where hippos blew water into the sun-
drenched air, until our horses feet left the ground and it felt as though we were flying. I fell madly
in love with the raw simplicity of the life, with all its danger and isolation.

It might have seemed the natural thing to write that passion into a novel, but it hasnt always been
easy to escape the stereotypes that dog any book about colonial East Africa. I knew I wanted to
evoke the beauty of the landscape, and uneasy though it made methe romance of the settlers
who first braved the wild to farm in remote corners of the Rift Valley. But I didnt want to be sucked
into yet another Happy Valley romp about white farmers living like aristocrats on land that was not
their own. I knew there must be a darker side to the European experience in East Africa that didnt
appear in the tourist brochures, something hidden and degenerate that Blixen and Hemingway, with
their white hunters and big-game safaris, had omitted. If I was going to write something, it would
have to be something real. A story that would explode
I fell madly in love with the myths.

the raw simplicity of

the life, with all its danger
and isolation.
It might have seemed the
natural thing to write that
passion into a novel, but
it hasnt always been easy
to escape the stereotypes
that dog any book about
colonial East Africa.
I picked up another photograph, and came to an abrupt
halt. It showed a very young child, naked, sliced open by
a knife so that her guts, swollen in the heat, bulged out
of her waist. I let it fall, shocked, but there were more.
Men, women, children, and cattle killed by careless
strokes of the blade. I turned one over. On the back was
written: Victims of the Mau Mau. And there were other
photographs showing Europeans who were killed by
Mau Mau, taken before their deaths: a boy of six sitting
on the grass with his brother; a young couple posing on
their veranda. Below the photographs was a policemans
handbook, dated 1953, and below that a manuscript
the authors history of the Mau Mau uprising.

I knew almost nothing about Mau Mauonly later did I learn that it was a political movement
fueled by the Kikuyu, who claimed they had lost their land to white settlersbut as I began to read,
a subtle chill crept down my spine. Here was this suitcase, and like Pandoras box it held treasures
and horrors, encapsulating that complicated mix of feelingspart longing, part forebodingthat
defined the way I felt about Kenya.

Over the next few days I read the manuscript. With unflappable calm it set out to show the violence
of the Kikuyu, their ingratitude, and the falsity of their land claims. It was a language that I later
came to realize was typical of European settlers in Kenya in the 1950s, desperate to hold on to a
country that was slipping out of their control.
I knew I needed to hear about Mau Mau from the inside. But where to find the voice that empire had
worked so hard to suppress? In the British Library, I came across a list of memoirs and transcripts
written by Mau Mau fighters. Here were the stories of the Kenyans who had fought for the Allies in
World War II and who were given so little on their return; of their bitterness at finding themselves
cast adrift; of the political fever that swept the country; of the struggle over land ownership; and of
the promises that were made but never kept.

Slowly I felt a story stir itself into life. It was a story that would peel back the mythsthe glamour
and the gin slingsso that I could write about the real Kenya. It was a story that would contravene
every unspoken rule of colonial society, and bring together two people from profoundly different
backgroundsa Kikuyu man and the daughter of a white farmer.

And it was a story thatthough it had come about

quite by chancewould embody my own uneasy
response to a country that had stolen my heart.

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McVeighAuthor JenniferMcVeighBooks