Picnic is delighted to announce that Andrew Sharp’s beautiful novel THE GHOSTS OF EDEN is now an ebook and can be downloaded from Amazon. In Picnic’s view, it is one of the most beautiful novels with an African setting ever written – and our gratitude remains undimmed to the readers of Waverton for selecting and championing it. In lyrical prose, Andrew Sharp tells the story of two boys: Zachye Katura, tending cattle in the grasslands of Kaaro Karungi; and Michael Lacey, the child of missionaries.

Happy in their childhood idyll, they are unaware the world around them is changing, propelling them towards tragedy. Haunted by grief and guilt, they grow up severed from their ancestral heritage. When they both fall in love with the same beautiful woman, they must each face their past and hear their ancestors. In a world where ancient ways of life and belief are overwhelmed by the new, Andrew Sharp draws his readers towards a moving and uplifting denouement where love and mortality are confronted.

Praise for the book includes:

‘This deeply moving book will leave you thoughtful for long after you have read it,’ the Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe

‘I [found] I had accidentally ordered a masterpiece . . . It is a beautifully written, life-affirming, thought provoking story and if only it had fallen on Richard and Judy’s doorstep instead of mine the author would by now have a best-seller on his hands,’ Andrew Crofts, well known ghost writer to celebrities

‘The delight is in the detail of this book. It brought to me pictures of Uganda and that feeling you always had there of life beyond this life, whispering, beckoning, interfering. Reality and myths reinforce each other as the title suggests and you are left feeling the vulnerability of humanity,’ Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

‘Grips the reader subtly, by force of personality: the personality of the main players and also of the place itself. A stunningly haunting debut,’ Lesley Mason, The Book Bag

‘I highly recommend this to anyone who wants to read about African culture without battling with symbolism or the endless horrors of war. It is a beautifully written story and I think it has just become my favourite book with an African setting – and one of my top ten books of the year,’ Jackie Bailey, Farm Lane Book Blog