While the Lion Sleeps is an evocative and at times disturbing story of colonial Africa, set in Kenya under the shadow of Uhuru

With the third book set around the golden plains and hills of her beloved Kenya, the author completes a trilogy to form an African version of the Forsyte Saga. While the Lion Sleeps continues the story where Whispering Grass left off, or at least partially for most of the same characters continue to live on their shambas (land) and try to cope with the disturbing prospect of losing their homes, clinging on to the hope that in spite of the winds of change following the awakening of the sleeping lion – the Uhuru revolution spearheaded by the Mau Mau ‘freedom fighters’ – all will be well eventually. Like the preceding two books, this vivid fictional recreation of a past era is valuable for the genuine insight it gives by an author who writes as an eyewitness of that now lost time of Colonial East Africa. While the characters grapple with the volatile political and social conditions in the wake of the nationalist movement active in Kenya during the 1950s, the author does not flinch from recording the harsh realities of a life lived under the dark and bloody shadow cast by the conflict that caused many of the European landowners to flee and seek a new life elsewhere.
About the author
Born in Crowborough, Sussex, Mary Rose Hall (pen name) lived for over 40 years in Kenya with her parents, both of whom farmed in the Highlands, while her mother also ran a successful business in Nairobi. Marrying in 1956, her two children were subsequently born there. After Uhuru she moved down to South Africa with her family before returning to the UK where she and her husband started a Banking College in the City

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Also by Mary Rose Hall:

Selengai

Whispering Grass