Wilbur Smith
Wilbur Addison Smith was a Zambian-born British-South African novelist specialising in historical fiction about international involvement in Southern Africa across four centuries, seen from the viewpoints of both black and white families.
An accountant by training, he gained a film contract with his first published novel When the Lion Feeds. This encouraged him to become a full-time writer, and he developed three long chronicles of the South African experience which all became best-sellers. He acknowledged his publisher Charles Pick's advice to "write about what you know best",and his work takes in much authentic detail of the local hunting and mining way of life, along with the romance and conflict that goes with it.
Smith died unexpectedly on 13 November 2021 at his Cape Town home; he was 88. His website announced that "He leaves behind him a treasure-trove of novels, as well as completed and yet to be published co-authored books and outlines for future stories."
By the time of his death in 2021 he had published 49 books and had sold more than 140 million copies, 24 million of them in Italy (by 2014).
An accountant by training, he gained a film contract with his first published novel When the Lion Feeds. This encouraged him to become a full-time writer, and he developed three long chronicles of the South African experience which all became best-sellers. He acknowledged his publisher Charles Pick's advice to "write about what you know best",and his work takes in much authentic detail of the local hunting and mining way of life, along with the romance and conflict that goes with it.
Smith died unexpectedly on 13 November 2021 at his Cape Town home; he was 88. His website announced that "He leaves behind him a treasure-trove of novels, as well as completed and yet to be published co-authored books and outlines for future stories."
By the time of his death in 2021 he had published 49 books and had sold more than 140 million copies, 24 million of them in Italy (by 2014).
