Elspeth Huxley is one of the authors who have written the most and the best about Kenya. In this field, she has cultivated every genre, from the fiction novel to the autobiography or essay. Her literary work is a huge portrait of the country from every perspective: its history, its culture, its nature or its politics.

Journalist and author of more than 30 books, she became famous worldwide with The Flame Trees of Thika (1959) and The Mottled Lizard (1962), works based on her childhood experiences in colonial Kenya.

She left Africa in 1925 and graduated in Agriculture from the University of Reading (England); she also graduated from Cornell University in New York. Elspeth returned to Africa periodically, becoming the press officer at Empire Marketing Board in 1929.

In 1935, she published her first book, White Man's Country: Lord Delamere and the Making of Kenya, a biography of Lord Delamere. After that, her works began to appear regularly.

Some of the author’s most prominent titles are: Murder on safari (1938), The African Poison Murders (1939), The Walled City (1948), Love among the Daughters (1968), The Challenge of Africa (1971), Scott of the Antarctic (1978), Nellie: Letters from Africa (1980), Out in the Midday Sun: My Kenya (1985) and Nine faces of Kenya (1990).

Huxley died at the age of 89 on 10 January 1997 in Gloucestershire, England.

Sources:

• Author’s official website

• Article in the New York Times

More information:

• Information about the series The Flame Trees of Thika

• Books in Google Books

• Biography on the author