William Boyd

A GOOD MAN IN AFRICA

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First published in Great Britain by Hamish Hamilton 1981
First published in the United States of America by William Morrow & Company, Inc. 1982
Published in Penguin Books 1982
Reissued in this edition 2010

Copyright © William Boyd, 1981
Extract from Love is Blind © William Boyd, 2018

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Cover image © africanpictures/akg-images

All rights reserved

ISBN: 978-0-241-97040-9

Contents

Part One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Part Two

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Part Three

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

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A GOOD MAN IN AFRICA

William Boyd was born in 1952 in Accra, Ghana, and grew up there and in Nigeria. His first novel, A Good Man in Africa (1981), won the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Somerset Maugham Prize. His other novels are An Ice-Cream War (1982, shortlisted for the 1982 Booker Prize and winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize), Stars and Bars (1984), The New Confessions (1987), Brazzaville Beach (1990, winner of the McVitie Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize), The Blue Afternoon (1993, winner of the 1993 Sunday Express Book of the Year Award), Armadillo (1998) and Any Human Heart (2002, winner of the Prix Jean Monnet). His latest novel, Restless (2006), won the Costa Novel of the Year Award. He is also the author of four collections of short stories: On the Yankee Station (1981), The Destiny of Nathalie ‘X’ (1995), Fascination (2004) and The Dream Lover (2008). He is married and divides his time between London and South West France.

The author wishes to acknowledge the kind assistance of the Southern Arts Association.

For Susan

Somewhere a strange and shrewd tomorrow goes to bed,

Planning a test for men from Europe; no one guesses

Who will be most ashamed, who richer, and who dead.

W. H. AUDEN