My Driver

About the Book

Vanessa Henman, a plucky but accident-prone white writer, flies out to Uganda for an African writers’ conference. She also means to visit her former cleaner, Ugandan Mary Tendo, now the successful Executive Housekeeper of Kampala’s Sheraton Hotel. But Mary has her own agenda: her son Jamil is missing, and she has secretly summoned Vanessa’s beloved ex-husband Trevor, a plumber, to her village to build a new well.

Vanessa sets off alone on safari to distant Bwindi Impenetrable Forest to see the mountain gorillas. But she quarrels with her driver, and a bloody war closes in on Bwindi from Congo. Can anyone save her? Will Mary Tendo find her son?

About the Author

Maggie Gee is the author of seventeen critically acclaimed books, which have been translated into more than fifteen languages. These include the novels The Red Children, My Cleaner and The White Family (shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction and International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award), and a memoir, My Animal Life. Gee is a Fellow and Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature and Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. She was awarded an OBE in 2012 for her services to literature.

Reviews

'Executed with a lovely, light touch ... an immensely enjoyable novel'.
Lionel Shriver, Daily Telegraph

‘Worldly, witty, enjoyable, impressive’
Doris Lessing

'Sparky, funny and terrifically entertaining'
Guardian

'Witty and original ... There's no one like Maggie Gee when it comes to pointing out the absurdities of the middle classes.'
Kate Saunders, The Times

'Cunningly constructed and witty ... touchingly funny.'
Nick Rennison, Sunday Times