The Napoleon of Africa

by Phil Smart

Rating: ****

In April 1815, former Royal Navy Commander Stephen Cowen chooses to start a new life in India with his wife, Elspeth, and their three children. When a powerful storm hits their boat, The Cumberland, the Cowen children—sixteen-year-old Nathaniel, fourteen-year-old Andrew, and twelve-year-old Beatrice—are swept overboard, believed to have drowned.

However, safely inside The Cumberland’s longboat, the children wash ashore on the East African coast, where a young Zulu warrior named Mandlakhe finds them. Over the next four years, the trio fully integrates into tribal life, becoming crucial to the formidable Chief Shaka, all while holding onto the hope of reuniting with their parents…

The Napoleon of Africa is an absorbing novel filled with historical events and real people, seen mainly through the Cowen siblings' perspective. The fascinating geopolitics of the Zulu Kingdom, along with its tribal hierarchy, language, and customs, are immersive and captivating. Smart’s clear, comprehensive knowledge, which remains accessible, makes it feel as if he's writing from within the African Interior rather than about it.

The fictional narrative is just as captivating, and Smart seamlessly blends it with the factual. He writes in an easy, precise, and engaging style as he unfolds the extraordinary yet believable story of the Cowen siblings. 

Smart does not linger on backstory, and within the first few chapters, the reader experiences the pivotal storm at sea alongside the Cowens. It’s a controlled, suspenseful scene, infused with dramatic irony for the reader and despair for the Cowens.

Smart skillfully shifts between perspectives and intertwines the shipwrecked children’s fight for survival with the introduction of fourteen-year-old Mandlakhe, vividly bringing the young African and his environment to the forefront. Mandlakhe is one of the strongest characters. Smart depicts him with nuance, and his relationship with Beatrice is sweetly heartwarming and quite profound.

However, it’s the introduction of Shaka, the inspiration for the novel’s title, who commands attention. The Zulu chief is fittingly imposing and fiercely intelligent, even if unpredictable and manipulative. His relationship with the Cowens, especially Nate, develops into a truly touching one. The tribal cunning and military strategy he demonstrates in defeating Zwide's armies, another chief, are compelling.

Smart constructs his narrative gradually, layer by layer. While focusing on Nate, Drew, and Bea’s experiences and their adaptation to Zululand and its people, he swiftly advances the story by twelve months just before the halfway point and introduces a couple of interconnected subplots.

The first involves explorer and naval Captain, Francis “Fiz” Farewell. Smart ensures this brave nonfictional character jumps off the page with a friendly, good-natured charm that masks a sharp social intelligence.

The other subplot concerns the morally degenerate Portuguese Governor-General in Delagoa Bay, Mozambique, Garcia Salazar. Both Salazar and Farewell are riveting personalities, each for different reasons, and could easily carry their own novels.

Periodically, Nate, Drew, and Bea can be frustrating. Beatrice’s precociousness sometimes irritates, and the sibling dynamic occasionally lacks conviction. While the trio’s adventures propel the narrative, the characters, as individuals, often display emotional detachment, even though they act older than their years, which, given the circumstances, is probably to be expected.

Smart deftly manages the various plotlines. The tangents of Fiz, Salazar, and, to a lesser extent, Shaka begin to converge with the three siblings' lives, leading to several gripping, action-packed scenes. The conclusion is foregone, but it still creates an impactful sense of tension.

The Napoleon of Africa is a hugely engrossing debut novel from a skilled storyteller. Well-structured, with a host of engaging characters and a neatly involving plot that effortlessly transports the reader to Eastern Africa in the early nineteenth century. Highly recommended.

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