Landeg White brings a lifetime of scholarship and lyricism to bear on this epic novel, but the intensely personal story of a young woman’s search for identity is not always as it seems.

Maria, a student in Brighton, begins to piece together her family history during a dull Christmas visit to her grandmother, after buying an African carving that she can't resist. Discovering that Caroline, the long suffering colonial wife whose letters are still safely kept was not her great-grandmother at all, Maria begins a journey of discovery that pieces together her disparate narratives.

"Original, subtle, inventive... Livingstone's Funeral has huge potential to become the best seller in its genre."
Jack Mapanje

Landeg White was born in South Wales. He taught at the University of the West Indies, Trinidad, in the University of Malawi, from where he was deported in 1972; in the University of Sierra Leone, and in the University of Zambia, where he was teaching when his first book, V.S. Naipaul: a Critical Introduction, appeared. Since 1994, he has lived in Portugal where he teaches at the Universidade Aberta (Open University). He has published a prize-winning translation of Camões' The Lusiads and four further collections of poetry.