Musungu Jim and the Great Chief Tuloko

English student teacher Jim Tulloh arrives in Zambawi hoping for a character-building experience. He doesn't realize he's about to be sucked into the rebirth of a nation . . .

Zambawi, a banana republic in sub-Saharan Africa, is on the verge of revolution. President Adini, dictator and eunuch, desperately clings to power. But his right-hand man General Bulimi is only interested in poetry and his past, his son Enoch is obsessed with girls not guerrillas and the state army switch sides so often they don't know which uniform to wear.

Meanwhile, Jim is kidnapped from his bush school by the rebel Black Boot Gang. And when the Gangers invoke the spirit of Zambawi's Great Chief Tuloko, Jim's fate takes an unexpected twist in an awe-inspiring collision of myth and the moment.

Patrick Neate's first novel is an idiosyncratic tale of coups, colonialism and coming of age. And rubber balls. And gulu gulu. And magic . . .