The Hissing Tree

Set in a poor white district in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) in 1952, The Hissing Tree opens with a not-quite-innocent eleven-year-old girl surreptitiously climbing the wall of the local police station to watch the flogging of an old bicycle thief. She has seen floggings before, but this time is different. Transfixed by the brutality she cannot turn away until suddenly the skeletal old man looks up and their eyes meet. She scrambles down fearful and unaware that she will never be the same. Nicole (Nick) Doughty, haunted by this encounter conjures up a fierce Zulu warrior to protect her. But this is just the beginning of her journey into nascent adulthood to confront how differently she is treated as a white and as a girl in central Africa. It is only her imagining of the personal travails and daring adventures of the real-life journalist, Sarah Bridgeworthy - recently abducted in Bechuanaland - that inspire Nick to stick to her own path. The Hissing Tree is one of the most vivid, revealing and human stories told about British Colonial Africa in many years. Illustrations by T.A Hartley