English student teacher Jim Tulloh arrives in Zambawi hoping for a character-building experience. He doesn't realize he's about to be sucked into the rebirth of a nation . . .

Zambawi, a banana republic in sub-Saharan Africa, is on the verge of revolution. President Adini, dictator and eunuch, desperately clings to power. But his right-hand man General Bulimi is only interested in poetry and his past, his son Enoch is obsessed with girls not guerrillas and the state army switch sides so often they don't know which uniform to wear.

Meanwhile, Jim is kidnapped from his bush school by the rebel Black Boot Gang. And when the Gangers invoke the spirit of Zambawi's Great Chief Tuloko, Jim's fate takes an unexpected twist in an awe-inspiring collision of myth and the moment.

Neate expertly intertwines the destiny of his protagonist with a host of characters that are both extraordinary and believably real; he creates a world structured around oral histories and local myths, invented language and proverbs. In addition, with the fictional state of Zambawi bearing close resemblance to contemporary Zimbabwe, the novel offers perceptive political comment, scathing both of ‘Zambawian’ politics and the mindset of the foreign diplomats.

The Zambawian President, Zita Adini, was playing with his rubber balls. Adini knew this wasn’t a very statesman-like thing to be doing. But he countered this thought with four others. One: no one knew that he was doing it. Only General Bulimi was in his office and he couldn’t see what Adini was up to behind the ornate mahogany desk. Two: he was the President and could do as he pleased. Three: he doubted whether any other world leader had rubber balls. Therefore to describe the action of playing with said balls as ‘unstatesman-like’ was irrelevant. And four: his scrotum was extremely itchy. He didn’t remember his natural-born testicles being quite so irritable.

This was how Adini tended to think, in numbered order. And he felt that it was a positive sign of a tidy, logical mind.

So tidy is my mind, Adini thought, that if I ever did my own shopping, I would not have to write a shopping list.

This hypothesis had yet to be tested.

General Bulimi was beginning to stumble over his words. He knew that Adini’s mind – however tidy – had begun to wander and he also knew that this tended to inflate the President’s noted testiness. As Adini slumped lower in his chair and his pot belly popped another inch above the desk, Bulimi wished he was somewhere else. Why couldn’t Adini at least allow him to sit down in his presence? He remembered the days of the independence war, when the pair of them fought shoulder to shoulder, driven by shared purpose and fading moral certainty. They discussed ideology in whispers around the camp fire; they watched each other’s backs on moonless nights in the African bush, when succumbing to sleep was a life-and-death gamble; Bulimi wrote revolutionary poetry on tatty scraps of paper and Adini peppered his comrade with classical quotations. Hadn’t they been friends? Twenty years of devoted, character-breaking service, ten years of independence and still he hadn’t won the right to a chair.

I am too tired to spend hours standing to attention as rigid as a lamp-post. I am just thirty-seven years old. But what does an arbitrary measurement of age mean when I have experienced enough to fill a dozen lifetimes? I am too tired; as tired as the Traveller himself.

The general cleared his throat and, knowing that Adini had not been listening, decided to begin again.

‘The Black Boot Gang have struck again, sir,’ the general repeated. ‘In Simba Province. The usual M.O.’

‘Modus operandi, Bulimi!’ spat the president in his unnaturally high voice. ‘For goodness sake! Do you have to be so lazy with your Latin?’

It was the usual Modus Operandi, sir. They marched into a village and handed out thousands of leaflets of treacherous propaganda. I have one here, sir, if you would like to see’.

Bulmi handed his president a cheaply printed piece of A4 paper. Across the top it said ‘Africa for the Africans!’ in bold type above a rough sketch of a curious four-legged beast. Adini snorted in disgust.

‘What’s this strange animal?’ he asked.

‘Sir?’

‘This!’ said Adini, waving the leaflet irritably. ‘This strange animal! It looks like a Zebra with a deformed head.’

‘I think it is supposed to be you, sir.’

‘Me?’ the president squeaked. ‘Why?’

Bulimi shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, licked his lips and wrinkled his nose.

‘I think it is satire, sir,’ he said. ‘I think the implication is that you are like a zebra, half black and half white. Because you won’t resolve the "land issue", sir. Because you have allowed the musungu to keep their land’…