The Weather in Africa
Three novellas about Europeans who stayed in East Africa: two sisters at a hotel on Kilimanjaro, a man building a farm in Kenya, a woman out of options.
- 1978
About Martha Gellhorn
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeThree linked novellas set in East Africa. In the Mountains follows two sisters at a hotel on the slopes of Kilimanjaro; In the Highlands takes a man released from a German prison camp after the war to Kenya, where he builds a dairy farm; By the Sea, the shortest, stays with a woman who has run out of room. The common subject is what happens to European outsiders who attach themselves to a landscape that does not need them. Published by Allen Lane in 1978, and generally held to be the strongest of her late fiction.
The story, in more detail
In the Mountains, the longest of the three, turns on two sisters at a hotel on the slopes of Kilimanjaro — one plain and capable, one beautiful and not — and on what the hotel and the mountain do to a family over years. In the Highlands follows a man who spent the war in a German prison camp and afterwards goes to Kenya alone and builds a dairy farm, on the theory that solitude and work will answer. By the Sea is the shortest and the hardest: a woman at the coast with nothing left to arrange.
The three are not connected by characters. What links them is a question about Europeans who attach themselves to East Africa and expect the attachment to be returned. Gellhorn had been going to Africa for decades by 1978 and the landscape in these novellas is not scenery — it is the thing the characters keep failing to become part of, and the reason each story ends where it does. All three were later collected in The Short Novels.
Why we recommend it
The strongest of the late fiction
If one book of her invented work is going to hold a reader, this is usually the one.
Landscape doing real work
Kilimanjaro, the highlands, the coast. The geography is not scenery; it is what the characters keep failing to become part of.
The novella suited her
Long enough for a life, short enough to stay hard. She returned to the form more than to the novel.
What this book explores
Timeline
1978
Allen Lane publishes the three East African novellas in London — generally held to be the strongest of Gellhorn's late fiction.
1991
All three are collected in The Short Novels of Martha Gellhorn.
Book editions
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- Allen Lane
- 1978
Reader reviews
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The Weather in Africa: frequently asked questions
Who wrote The Weather in Africa?
Martha Gellhorn. The book was published in 1978.
What is The Weather in Africa about?
Three linked novellas set in East Africa — two sisters at a hotel on the slopes of Kilimanjaro; a man released from a wartime prison camp who builds a dairy farm in Kenya; and a shorter one about a woman by the sea.
What kind of book is it?
Fiction — three novellas, the form Gellhorn is often considered strongest in.
Where is it set?
In East Africa, a landscape Gellhorn knew from the years she spent living there.
Where else can I find these novellas?
They are collected alongside her earlier fiction in The Short Novels of Martha Gellhorn (1991).