Leaves from the Fig Tree

This memoir opens in an old, delapidated manor house outside Dublin and is narrated by a young girl. Diana has been abandoned by her parents. Born in Johannesburg, where her parents were living at the time, awaiting an Irish inheritance, she was shipped off to Ireland after their separation and there brought up by her eccentric grandparents and servants on the family estate. At the age of 18, Diana goes out to Kenya where she marries and, during the heady period of African independence, she moves southwards, first to Tanzania and then to South Africa, returning to the city of her birth.