Last Orders at Harrods [Paperback]

** 'A highly entertaining account of how people make the best of living in sub-Saharan Africa (Alexander McCall Smith, THE HERALD Books of the Year )

** 'Some devastatingly hilarious moments ... a satire that should be required bedtime reading at Gleneagles (SCOTSMAN )

** 'This wickedly satirical novel is also a serious critique of Africa's troubled state (GUARDIAN )

** 'Jolly good fun (DAILY MAIL ) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

* A timely and satirical - yet affectionate - portrait of the ups and downs of life in contemporary Africa --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Charity Mupanga is the widowed owner of Harrods International Bar (and Nightspot) - a favourite meeting place for the movers and shakers of Kibera. While she can handle most challenges, from an erratic supply of Worcestershire sauce, the secret ingredient in her cooking, to the political tensions in East Africa's most notorious slum and a cholera outbreak that follows the freak floods in the state of Ubuntu, some threatening letters from London lawyers are beginning to overwhelm her. How dare a London store, no matter how big and famous, claim exclusive use of the first name of her late father, Harrods Tangwenya, gardener to successive British high commissioners for nearly twenty years? Well-meant but inept efforts to foil the lawyers by Edward Furniver, a former fund manager who runs Kibera's co-operative bank and who seeks Charity's hand in marriage, bring Harrods International Bar to the brink of disaster, and Charity close to despair. In the nick of time an accidental riot, triggered by the visit to the slum of World Bank President Hardwick Hardwicke, coupled with some quick thinking by Titus Ntoto, the 14-year-old leader of Kibera's toughest gang, the Mboya Boys United Football Club, help Charity - and Harrods - to triumph in the end.

Michael Holman was brought up in Zimbabwe. He was Africa editor of the London Financial Times from 1984 until 2002; between 1977 and 1984 he was the Financial Times' Africa correspondent, based in Lusaka, Zambia.