Books by Robert Gurney

The object of desire at the heart of 'The Jaguar Men of Kiziba' is the last King of Rwanda's Jaguar Mk5 coupé. Based on a true story, it includes Princess Margaret's state visit to Uganda. The main character's weakness, envy, leads to a dramatic ending. 'The Lungfish Man of Mbazi' has a relatively happy dénouement. It involves a research programme at Bat Valley linked to space exploration that almost ends in disaster for the researcher. 'The Mount Elgon Waiter' culminates, in a Fawlty Towers-like scene in a tourist hotel, in a reference to witchcraft. 'The Moth Lady of Tororo' finds an ageing British lawyer almost falling for a glamorous young post-grad student in a swimming pool situated in a hotel near the Uganda-Kenya border. 'The Kampala Shopping Mall Ostrich Man' examines the disgraceful behaviour of a married Lothario. 'The Owl Man of Mukuno' is a dark tale involving an Englishman, his Mugandan wife and his mother-in-law. 'The Bat Valley University Praying Mantis Man' delves deeply into a work by the surrealist artist M.C. Escher: 'Dream'. 'The Snake Lady of Nakasero' involves a man's deep fear of snakes, his efforts to overcome it, a doomed relationship and a fatal snakebite suffered during curfew. A fear of spiders is the subject of 'The Spider Man of Gulu'. It features the spoiled daughter of a member of the British Establishment who overcomes her fear only to meet an unexpected end in the north of Uganda. 'The Congolese Warthog Man' relates how a man from Katanga, turning his back on the ivory trade, learns how to love a warthog. Finally, 'Bat Valley' tells the story of a man whose all-consuming interest in bats leads to near-disaster. ... and many more humorous tales.

In his book A Night in Buganda, Tales from Post-Colonial Africa (2014), consisting of one hundred and forty-four tales, the author struggled to make sense of the years he spent in Uganda in the nineteen-sixties. Democracy in that newly independent country was moving inexorably towards dictatorship. You could feel it happening. He and his fellow aid workers were told they were doing a good job but doubts assailed him. Things were falling apart. Was the effort invested about to be wasted? Writing the first book helped him to put some of the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together. In this book, Absurd Tales from Africa, he makes no such attempt to go any further. He explores gleefully the genres of the grotesque and the absurd. The reader is invited to go with the surreal flow and, perhaps, to enjoy the humour.