Elephant Song

Wilbur Smith has lived an incredible life of adventure, and now he shares the extraordinary true stories that have inspired his fiction. From being attacked by lions to close encounters with deadly reef sharks, from getting lost in the African bush without water to crawling the precarious tunnels of gold mines, from marlin fishing with Lee Marvin to near death from crash-landing a Cessna airplane, from brutal school days to redemption through writing and falling in love, Wilbur Smith tells us the intimate stories of his life that have been the raw material for his fiction.

Robbed of his wife and ousted from his huge shipping empire, Nick Berg is hell-bent on vengeance. It is the sea that gives him his opportunity. When his arch-rival's luxury liner is trapped in the tempestuous Antarctic, Nick stakes all to pit his powerful salvage tug, the Warlock, in a desperate race against time and the elements.

King and country. No matter the cost. With the backing of his uncle, General Penrod Ballantyne, young Leon Courtney joins the King's Rifles of Nairobi. When he becomes discouraged by the dishonesty of army life, his uncle recruits him for a special mission - spying on the Germans in East Africa, whom the General suspects are preparing for the Kaiser's war. Posing as a professional game hunter, Leon is tasked with gathering information on one of his clients, wealthy industrialist Otto Von Meerbach.

Danger surounds all those who oppose the ruling elite. But Taita, a wise and formidably gifted enunch slave, begins the dangerous journey towards his glorious dream: to restore the majesty of the Pharaoh of Pharaohs on the glittering banks of the nile.

Harry Fletcher, a man with a chequered past, has reformed and is making an honest living as a charter skipper fishing for big game in the seductive waters of the Indian Ocean. Suddenly, men from the world of violence Harry has put behind him overturn his good intentions, involving him in a hectic race to recover a fabulous treasure from an ancient wreck.

In German East Africa, on the eve of the First World War, two freebooting adventurers, one a flamboyant Irish American, the other an impeccable young Englishman, pit their wits against the gross German commissioner from whose territory they are making their living as game hunters and ivory poachers.

In the heart of the African jungle, Bruce Curry is the leader of a mercenary band, with the dubious support of three white officers. His mission is to relieve a mining town cut off by fighting and to retrieve a priceless consignment of diamonds. Ranged against his ill-disciplined unit are bandits, guerillas, and hostile tribes. But there is another, even deadlier enemy: one of his own men.

There are heroes and there are monsters. But most of us are ordinary mortals caught up in events too turbulent for any of us. Perhaps when the battle is over, all we will inherit are the ashes of a once beautiful land.

Craig Mellow, acclaimed author but unhappy exile, seizes the chance to return to Zimbabwe when he is given a spying mission for the World Bank. Accompanied by beautiful photographer Sally-Anne Jay, he is at first unaware of the dangerous currents of tribal conflict that swirl below the calm surface of Zimbabwean politics. Then he stumbles upon a highly organised ivory-poaching operation which masks the treacherous plot to sell the country he once fought for into slavery....  

It is 1667, and the mighty naval war between the Dutch and the English still rages. Sir Francis Courteney and his son Hal, in their fighting caravel, are on patrol off southern Africa, lying in wait for a treasure-laden galleon of the Dutch East India Company that is returning from the Orient. They have a letter from Charles II sanctioning them to hunt down and capture enemy ships "beyond the line".

The Van Der Byl Diamond Company, willed by its founder to his son Benedict, turns out to be a bequest of hatred. For it is couched in such terms as to offer him the instrument of destruction of his bitterest rival. "Destroy Johnny" is the old man's implacable message. And so, consumed with envy for his own foster-brother, Benedict sets out in ruthless pursuit of this goal - and Johnny is plunged into a maelstrom of greed, vengeance, and murder.

From the trenches of France, General Sean Courtney comes back to fame, fortune, and a seat in the government. Mark Anders, the courageous young South African whom he has come to regard as his own son, returns to nothing, his grandfather murdered, his property seized by an unknown company. At the bottom of the mystery is Sean's son Dirk, the jealous, violent, and power-crazed genius whose all-consuming hatred can only end in blood.

Jake Barton is an American engineer, Gareth Swales a stylish Englishman with a nose for a quick deal. Both have always moved from one escapade to another. Now, as Mussolini prepares to annihilate the people of Ethiopia, the two adventurers come up against Vicky Camberwell, the beautiful but fiery reporter bent on espousing their cause. The trio dares to run a gauntlet of guns and a batch of run-down armoured cars in a final, desperate gamble for freedom.

The hijacking of a jumbo jet off the Seychelles galvanizes anti-terrorist chief Peter Stride into the action for which he has spent a lifetime training. But even in the hail of bullets that follows, he knows that this is only the beginning of a nightmare. Stride is the one man who might find the twisted genius who holds the world hostage, if only his every move were not anticipated by the enemy.

At the dawn of a new century, the pioneers of Rhodesia have staked their claims and stocked their farms in the land they have carved as their own. But in the hills, the Matable indunas are preparing for the bloody rebellion that will scar the opponents forever and etch for them the same tragic legacy for generations to come.