Bruce writes as Mwenye Hadithi (‘story teller’ in Swahili) - pronounced m-wen-yay hadeethee

I was born in Nairobi, Kenya, with a wild garden full of gazelles and porcupines and warthogs. A crocodile once went to sleep by the ironing board, and a hippopotamus got stuck in the back gate. At school we kept tarantula-like spiders in our desks as pets so we could make them wrestle, and the whole school once fought a troop of baboons on the hockey pitch.

Then I went to Rugby School in England. Fewer animals. At London University, studying foreign literature inspired me to write, and I collected traditional African stories where the foibles of village characters, thinly disguised as animals, would lead to a moral lesson.

Publishers weren’t too keen on stories where hyenas had their bottoms sewn up so they could eat a lot, so I borrowed bits from the old stories, and in 1984 the Greedy Zebra was published.

I now design tropical landscapes for a living, but I write whenever I can. A teenage adventure set on the wilder shores south of Zanzibar, and the recollections of a coma patient are slowly taking shape as projects.

WORKS IN PROGRESS

With my daughter now grown and a lifetime of worldwide surfing adventures under my belt, the current work in progress is Zen and the Art of Surfing Wrapped in a Travelogue Romance.

I only intend to write one great and funny novel in my lifetime, and this is it.