The Hippo Pool

by W V Squair

Three brothers have spent their childhood in a rural village near the River Zambezi in central Africa. The Hippo Pool is a special place where they have always gone to fish and to confide in each other. Now Baba, their father, has fallen ill with a mysterious disease and nothing will ever be the same again. The brothers’ lives are about to take vastly different paths.

The youngest boy, Chikomo, is traumatised by a dreadful accident in a minefield, a relic from the liberation war. His older brother, Mahachi, works in tourism and begins to experience and savour
the unfamiliar ways of the developed world, which does not always serve him well. Usai, the eldest brother, marries a young woman from the township, Nelisiwe, but she has progressive ideas that threaten to break apart the traditional village life they all value
so much. Soon Usai begins to fear that his heart will be broken.

In a story anchored in the village rondavels, involving tradition, family loyalties, betrayal, guilt and passion, The Hippo Pool encapsulates all the complex social dilemmas and opportunities confronting modern Africa.

W V Squair was born and educated in Brighton, Sussex. She trained as a Home Economics teacher in Liverpool and taught for twenty years in secondary education. She spent eleven years living in Zimbabwe, witnessing the last years of the liberation struggle and the transition from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe. W V Squair lectured at a college of education where she became involved in African culture. She also developed an interest in African wildlife and visited game reserves throughout the continent. She married in Africa, enjoying a garden wedding. After leaving Zimbabwe she lived for some time in the Netherlands, before returning to England to teach and write a memoir of her time in Africa. The Hippo Pool is her first novel, set in the Africa she loves so much.

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The Hippo Pool by W V Squair

ISBN: 978-1-84624-304-2, 224 pp, £16.99, hbk

Published 26th March 2009

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