I Dreamed of Africa

‘Often, at the hour of day when the savannah grass is streaked with silver, and pale gold rims the silhouettes of the hills, I drive with my dogs up to the Mukutan, to watch the sun setting behind the lake, and the evening shadows settle over the valleys and plains of the Laikipia plateau.’Kuki Gallmann’s haunting memoir of bringing up a family in Kenya in the 1970s first with her husband Paulo, and then alone, is part elegaic celebration, part tragedy, and part love letter to the magical spirit of Africa.

Powerful, poetic, unbearably moving: I wept, 'This is a book that belongs on a shelf with the memoirs of Olive Schreiner, Elspeth Huxley, Beryl Markham – and with Out of Africa Judith Thurman, Ms Gallmann captures perfectly the magic of Kenya, creating an almost overwhelming picture of beauty and drama, pain and joy, death and resurrection . . . Vividly reminiscent of Isak Dinesen

Kuki Gallmann was born near Venice and moved to Kenya in 1972 with her husband and young son. Following their deaths, she set up the Gallmann Memorial Foundation to promote new ways of combining development and conservation, and to provide sponsorship for the education of Kenyans. I Dreamed of Africa was first published in 1991 to international acclaim and it became a world-wide bestseller. Her subsequent books, African Nights and Night of the Lions, were also published by Penguin. She lives in Kenya with her daughter and her dogs.