 First edition | |
| Author | William Boyd |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Hamish Hamilton |
Publication date | 1981 |
| Pages | 256 |
| Awards | Whitbread First Novel Award Somerset Maugham Award |
| ISBN | 1-4000-3002-1 |
| OCLC | 53163201 |
| 823/.914 22 | |
| LC Class | PR6052.O9192 G6 2003 |
| Followed by | An Ice Cream War (1982) |
A Good Man in Africa is William Boyd's first novel, published in 1981. It won both the Whitbread Book Award for a first novel and the Somerset Maugham Award that year.
Morgan Leafy is First Secretary to the British Deputy High Commission in Nkongsamba in the fictional West African country of Kinjanja. Leafy is unhappy in his post and struggles with various personal and professional difficulties. He becomes entangled in a range of problematic situations, including an affair with his boss’s daughter, a bribery scheme involving a local politician, and a medical crisis involving a venereal disease.
Leafy is tasked with persuading a local politician, Sam Adekunle, to cooperate with the British High Commission. Meanwhile, he is dealing with his own failing health and a blackmail threat. His superior, Cecil Boss, pressures him to manage sensitive diplomatic issues, but Leafy is ill-equipped to do so.
Dr Alex Murray, a local Scottish doctor, becomes involved when Leafy seeks medical treatment and later plays a role in dealing with a broader health emergency in the region. As political tensions rise and Leafy's plans unravel, he finds himself increasingly isolated and out of his depth.
The novel concludes with Leafy facing the consequences of his actions, left with few allies and uncertain prospects.
Morgan Leafy also appears in two short stories, "Next Boat from Douala" and "The Coup" which concern his departure from Africa. The stories appear in the collection On the Yankee Station , published later in 1981, but as Boyd explained in an interview the collection was actually written before the novel, though Boyd claimed he had written both when he sent the collection to potential publishers. Hamish Hamilton agreed to publish the novel (as yet unwritten) and collection in that order, Boyd admits "So I said to my new editor, Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson, 'Look, the manuscript is in a shocking state, I just need a couple of months to knock into shape’, and I sat down and wrote A Good Man in Africa in a white heat of dynamic endeavour in three months at my kitchen table. [1]
William Boyd grew up in Western Africa, living in both Ghana and Nigeria. He explains that the setting for the novel "is completely set in Ibadan in Western Nigeria even though I changed the names, but everybody in it is made up. It’s rooted in my autobiography in terms of its colour, texture and smells but the story is – and that’s something that’s always been the case with me – invented. There is an autobiographical element in that the character of Dr Murray is very much a two-dimensional portrait of my father." [1] Boyd said that it was his wife's idea to write a full length novel about Leafy and that he considers that, "inhabiting someone who's absolutely unlike me is more attractive than writing some thinly disguised autobiography". [2]
In 1985 BBC Radio 4 broadcast an audio adaptation starring Alan Rickman as Leafy. It was repeated on BBC Radio 4 Extra in 2022. [5]
In 1994 the novel was made into a film of the same name, with a script written by Boyd. [6]