Charity

Set in contemporary London and 1950s Kenya in the midst of the Mau Mau rebellion, Madeline Dewhurst’s captivating debut, longlisted for the Bath Novel Award, spins a web of secrets and deceit

LONGLISTED: Bath Novel Award ‘Dazzling… keeps you guessing till the end’ – Emily Bullock Edith, an elderly widow with a large house in an Islington garden square, needs a carer. Lauren, a nail technician born in the East End, needs somewhere to live. A rent-free room in lieu of pay seems the obvious solution, even though the pair have nothing in common. Or do they? Why is Lauren so fascinated by Edith’s childhood in colonial Kenya? Is Paul, the handsome lodger in the basement, the honest broker he appears? And how does Charity, a Kenyan girl brutally tortured during the Mau Mau rebellion, fit into the equation? Capturing the spirited interplay between two women divided by class, generation and a deeper gulf from the past, and offering vivid flashbacks to 1950s East Africa, Madeline Dewhurst’s captivating debut spins a web of secrets and deceit – where it’s not always obvious who is the spider and who is the fly.