The Last Elephant Hunter

Set against a present-day backdrop of civil unrest in Africa, The Last Elephant Hunter is a story about two families, one black, one white, whose lives interweave over a period of two years as the disorder worsens. In unflinching plot-driven prose, the story moves from an attack on Winsbert and Elizabeth Collins’ farm by Chakijane and Jacob Gabanya during the early days of simmering tensions, to a period two years later when the country is in a state of complete chaos and fragmentation. The Collins and Gabanya families continue to collide with each-other during this escalation, testing whether compassion can prevail over political ruptures. Racial division, the ethics of hunting, sexual violence and child soldiers as weapons of war – these relevant, contemporary themes crisscross with a young man’s explosive journey into manhood, and a mother’s desperate search for her missing son, despite the horrifying consequences of her defiance and bravery.