Children of the Country - Coast to Coast Across Africa

'Joseph Hone went to Zaire for the BBC. His aim was a series of talks about crossing Africa from coast to coast, as Stanley had done. That intention began, and ended, in Kinshasha... Having fallen in love in boyhood with the idea of Africa, he had looked for 'great liberating spaces', and found himself in a city from which there was no escape without a private plane.' Guardian 'For those who like to read, in comfort, about uncomfortable journeys, frightful hotels, dreadful meals, and broken-down capitals, I strongly recommend Children of the Country. The section on Kinshasha, in particular, is both alarming and hilarious.' Richard Cobb, Spectactor 'Books of the Year' 'A darkly coloured personal odyssey.... Hone hopes to achieve some kind of perspective on his unraveling marriage here in the landscape of his boyhood fantasies... His ability to articulate his own reactions to the landscape, combined with his precise notation of detail, lend his narrative freshness and vitality.' Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

Joseph Hone, born 1937, is a novelist, journalist and broadcaster. Faber Finds publishes his four Peter Marlow spy thrillers - The Private Sector, The Sixth Directorate, The Valley of the Fox and The Flowers of the Forest, plus the stand-alone thriller The Paris Trap and the autobiographical Children of the Country.Finds' editions of the four Marlow thrillers as well as The Paris Trap each feature a new preface about Hone and his work by the contemporary spy novelist and non-fiction author Jeremy Duns.As a writer of spy thrillers, Joseph Hone has been compared favourably with the likes of Eric Ambler, Len Deighton and John le Carre. His most recent book, Wicked Little Joe, is a memoir published by Lilliput Press.