Kenya

Set largely in Kenya around the turn of the century, when European colonialism there was at its height, this robust and historically authentic tale centers on the efforts of a Scottish engineer to build a railroad from Mombasa to Uganda, in the heart of the wild continent. John Andrewessp ok? em pursues his goal undaunted by hostile natives, wild animals, squabbles among his workers, German competition and the forbidding terrain through which he must blast his way; but his greatest trial comes in the form of a colleague with whom he is forced to share his young wife's affections. Halkin, who worked as a BBC producer in Kenya, is at pains to capture the viewpoint not only of the colonists but of the Kikuyu and other tribesmen, who for the most part watched the white man's expropriation of their land with mounting alarm. It is a saga mixing adventure, violence and romance, populated with vivid characters and told with an evehandedness that does much to explain the conflicting tensions in this tumultuous period of Africa's development. (April 14)