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Born in South Africa, Justin Cartwright lived in Britain after studying at Trinity College, Oxford. He worked in advertising and directed documentaries, films and television commercials, and wrote seventeen novels. They include the Booker-shortlisted In Every Face I Meet, the Whitbread Novel Award-winner Leading the Cheers, the acclaimed White Lightning, shortlisted for the 2002 Whitbread Novel Award, The Promise of Happiness, winner of the 2005 Hawthornden Prize, The Song Before It Is Sung, To Heaven By Water, Other People's Money, Lion Heart and Up Against the Night. His novel Look At It This Way was made into a three-part drama by the BBC in 1992, and he also published three works of non-fiction. He died in December 2018.

Dodging the vested interests of the Ngwenya clan, his wayward wife Magdan and the colonial dinosaur Jumbo Munroe, the narrator embarks on a quasi-biblical quest that owes more to Waugh and Ballard than Rider Haggard, a tale that hits the ground running and continues at a vigorous pace. This is one of the shrewdest and most diverting novels about Africa one could hope to read.