Ian Tennent
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Ian was born in Durban, South Africa in 1973 but grew up in Zululand and loved it. Thereafter, he got himself a degree, a wife and a child (in that order). He’s lived and died several times in the UK and now he and his family are back in Kwa-Zulu Natal, where they belong.
He can play squash but he can’t kite-surf; he can make beer but not biltong. He owes his love of writing to four great English teachers from his school days. He owes his love of stories to the place that reared him; the place that entertained his young mind, stole his heart and captivated his soul. Following his school days, Ian spent a year in the army wearing the dubious title, Lieutenant Tennent. He spent a few planned years at varsity, then a few more. From the boiler-room of a shoe-box accounting firm to the grand back-offices of global investment banks, his love of writing kept him alive and yearning for the days of a bygone life. Zululand Snow, his first book, is his way of paying homage to the exquisite nature of that life and landscape at an age when a boy’s imagination still held sway; the age of half-belief.
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Zululand Snow
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Literary fiction, mystery, adventure, historical fiction
While Zululand reels under the blows of a lunatic’s hammer, half-hearted schoolboy Craig's imagination ignites when he links an Anglo-Zulu War letter his grandfather bequeathed him, to his History teacher's mesmerising tale of the lost inKatha, ‘The Soul of the Zulu Nation’. Inspired, he resolves to find it despite the scepticism of his best friend. However, in his feverish quest to find the relic he unwittingly sets in motion a chain of events which disturbs the dark equilibrium of forces in his hometown; forces both past and present, and steeped in malice. As chance encounters with his History teacher become alarmingly more frequent, events explode when the boys clash with caddies from the local golf-course, the malevolent greenkeeper makes a sinister threat and the finger of suspicion drifts towards a friend’s father when the lunatic’s hammer falls once again. Set in a small town in Zululand during the turbulent summer of 1983, Zululand Snow is the tale of a boy searching for a way to bring a glorious past back to life. It’s a tale of history and imagination, of folklore and legend, and the gravitational pull they exert on the marrow in a boy’s bones.
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