Charity - 9781785632303

A powerful story about race, class, and the clash of generations as two Londoners from utterly different worlds find themselves under the same roof. Flashbacks to the colonial brutality of the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya. 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.