The novelist who wrote best-selling tales of African adventure

Wilbur Smith 1933–2021

Wilbur Smith said he wrote what he knew—a bold claim, considering his Africabased novels were packed with lantern-jawed heroes, gem-hunting mercenaries, and lusty romances. Yet Smith, who grew up in Africa in the twilight of imperialism and was the descendant of British colonists, was not entirely boasting. He shot his first lion at age 13—the first in a long line of big-game kills—and in later life would trek across the desert on a camel, work in a gold mine, and swim with sharks. The author of 49 books that have sold more than 140 million copies, Smith regarded writing as just another exercise in machismo. “It’s not a game for sissies,” he advised young hopefuls. “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, and then try some more.”

Smith was raised “on a 30,000-acre cattle ranch” in the British protectorate of Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), said The New York Times. His strict father discouraged reading and gave Smith his first rifle at age 8; his painter mother encouraged her son’s bookishness. After graduating from college in South Africa, he worked as a government accountant while writing on the side. Twenty publishers rejected his first manuscript, so Smith turned to family history, drawing on his grandfather’s experiences in the 1880s South African gold rush and the Zulu wars. The result, 1964’s When the Lion Feeds, was a best-seller.

He became a full-time writer, “producing a book of a thousand or so pages every other year,” said The Times (U.K.). Detractors accused Smith of reveling in brutality and glorifying colonialism; critics called his books formulaic pulp. Smith claimed to pay little attention to such comments. “They’re judging Great Danes against Pekingese,” he said. “I’m not writing literature. I’m writing stories.”