Famous writer’s life a thriller too
Wilbur Smith’s autobiography depicts a life lived to the utmost, writes Orielle Berry
FOR SOME reason I shied away from Wilbur Smith novels for a large part of my life – perhaps because as a somewhat arrogant and snobbish teenager I deemed him a popularist best-selling author and that stuck with me for many years.
Now I have been captured by Smith’s consummate writing style; his evocative and highly descriptive way with words. Perhaps for all those years I did myself an injustice?
From the word go in his autobiography, Smith describes in the finest language a life in which adventure and risk taking were and still are the rule of the day. The book opens with a vividly painted picture of the Africa he loves, the continent where he was born, came of age, lived, owned property and travelled extensively.
Smith grew up on a farm in then Rhodesia. It was a life of tough love, strong discipline, a strict father (whom he hero-worshipped) and a more intellectually inclined mother who taught him to love books.
One of his defining moments came at the age of eight with a harrowing but thrilling experience. As they slept in a tent in the Luangwa Valley in Zambia on an annual safari, they awakened to the roar of lions nearing their camp. Man-eating lions, which they’d been warned about, were on the rampage.
To cut a long story short, Smith’s father, after stumbling half asleep out of his tent, smashed his nose against a tent pole. Bleeding profusely, he aimed a shot and killed the alpha lion.
Two other lions in the pride were also slain, imprinting on the young Wilbur’s mind: “that night I truly understood ... it was my father who would be the inspiration for the heroes who eventually graced the pages of my books.”
That night his father became the benchmark against which all other men would be measured.
Against his father’s other plans for him, the stubbornly determined Wilbur shored up books like other boys collect cards of soccer stars. “From an early age I wanted to be a writer. I loved telling stories. It was a skill I had been honing from the moment I could read, a way of escaping into distant, imagined lands.”’
Boyhood escapades as a wild farm boy devouring books on the side moved on, and Smith went to school at Cordwalles in Natal. They were deeply traumatic years as he was repeatedly caned and bulllied; then on to his halcyon days at Rhodes university, where he discovered sex and girls and worked holidays on a trawler and a whaling boat.
His early days as a struggling writer working at a soul-destroying clerical job in then Salisbury included countless letters of rejection for his first book,The Gods First Make Mad.
But then came the book that put him on the map: When the Lion Feeds. At the age of 33, the telegram came. “Inside were the words that would change my life ... When the Lion Feeds would go on to be a best-seller, to ensnare readers across the world, and bring the career that would bring me so many adventures in my long life.”
He made his first million at the age of 40. There’s not much he hasn’t done, from deep sea diving; being menacingly surrounded by sharks; fishing for massive marlin; leading an idyllic life on the Seychelles; facing a polar bear head-on in Alaska; travelling to Egypt to research the fascinating Egyptian series; spending time in America which is superbly evoked; and in between it all he puts down his thoughts on hunting, conservation, seafaring, love, writing and how he does it.
Fifty five years of writing, 41 best- sellers, with sales of 130 million copies of his books translated into 26 languages. Some refer to him as arrogant, right-wing and hard-nosed. Others seek him out from all four corners of the globe to adulate him. He’s done it his way.
In the final pages of his book he writes: “I have enjoyed a privileged life that l never imagined ... I have been wherever my heart has desired and in the process have also taken readers to many, many places.
“I always say, I’ve started wars, I’ve burned down cities, and I’ve killed hundreds of thousands of people – but only in my imagination!”
Fascinating, entertaining and thoroughly immersive, Smith’s book will enlighten on a life that has been lived to the utmost. I urge you to get your hands on a copy.