MY CHOCOLATE REDEEMER

261pp., paperback, Reprint, London, (1989) 2010

Bella is a teenage chocolate junkie living in the village of La Frisette in France with her aristocratic grandmother. A black stranger arrives and takes an entire floor in the grandest hotel amid rumours that he is an exiled polygamous African tyrant overthrown in a coup.

Christopher Hope was born in Johannesburg in 1944. His novels include Cape Drives (Thomas Pringle Award), A Separate Development (David Higham Memorial Prize), Kruger's Alp (Whitbread Prize for Fiction), Serenity House (shortlisted for the 1992 Booker Prize), My Mother's Lovers and Shooting Angels. His memoir, White Boy Running, won the 1989 CNA Award.