Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Read-Alikes
Jennifer graduated from Oxford University in 2002 with a degree in English Literature. She went on to work in film, television, radio and publishing, before leaving her day job to do an MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. She graduated in 2011.
She has traveled in wilderness areas of East Africa and Southern Africa, often in off-road vehicles, driving and camping along the way. The Fever Tree and Leopard at the Door were inspired by those experiences.
In 2014 The Fever Tree won the Epic Novel Category at the Romantic Novel of the Year Awards.
Jennifer McVeigh's website
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The Fever Tree first spoke to me on a dark winter's afternoon in the British Library. The hush in the reading room was broken only by the turning of old pages and the soft tapping of keys. I was researching the history of English colonials in South Africa, and amongst the books stacked on my desk was an old canvas- bound diary. The spine creaked as I opened it, and the gilt lamp spilled a pool of light onto its thick yellowing pages. The diary had been written by a doctor at the end of the nineteenth century, and it told the extraordinary story of a smallpox epidemic that had ravaged the diamond-mining town of Kimberley. Extraordinary because— reading on— it became clear that the epidemic had been covered up by the great statesman Cecil Rhodes to protect his investment in the mines.
The disease raged for over two years, killing thousands of men, women, and children, mostly African laborers. The tragedy was that the epidemic could have been brought under control in just a few months if the doctors had quarantined and vaccinated patients instead of denying its very existence. The doctor writing the diary had fought— at great personal risk— to bring the epidemic to the attention of the authorities in Cape...
André Brink was born in 1935 in South Africa. His diverse literary production encompasses novels, essays on literature and politics, literary anthologies, plays, children's books, translations and a book of memoirs.
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If you enjoyed:
The Fever Tree
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Philida
by André Brink
Born in London, David Brookshaw is an emeritus professor at the School of Modern Languages at the University of Bristol. He specialises in comparative literature, translation, and postcolonial Portuguese literature. He has ... (more)
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The Fever Tree
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