'The finest piece of writing, novels or otherwise, on the fighting in the Rhodesian bush. Thrush writes skilfully from personal experience that lends strong credibility to a work that he protests is pure fiction. The historical background is accurate - and in some instances revealing.' - J R T Wood - historian and author

Battle action from the African bush ...
... Zimbabwe-Rhodesia - March 1980: It is a time of turmoil and suffering as white rule gives way to black nationalism in a part of British colonial Africa riven by a war that has cost 50 000 dead and untold wounded. In the humid, pre-dawn gloom, Rhodesian Army units are poised to re-group and attack assembled guerrilla forces. Results of the internationally supervised elections are seeping through: an overwhelming vote for Robert Mugabe. In camps across the country, twenty thousand guerrillas stand to their weapons, waiting for the napalm to come crashing and burning into hut, trench and bunker. Waiting for the soldiers, pouring down from the sky.

This fight is to the death - the climax of eight years of war between two allied guerrilla armies and an established government which has dared to unilaterally declare its independence from England. No quarter is given. It is the end of Empire in Africa: Rhodesian history, and Zimbabwean history, too. Of Land and Spirits is the best-selling classic of the final years of that war - the story of Andrew Scott, John Bruton, George Sibanda, Kuretu, Mpehla and many others of the Rhodesian Army as they fight with great skill a war they cannot win. For even as the kills mount, so the numbers of the enemy inside the country grow ever larger. It is also the story of a rural population and its swikiros - the spirit mediums who lead and guard - won over to the revolutionary side by Jason Mavunha, Elias Chimombe and other guerrillas of the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army who have dared to contest the ancestral land.

This is war fiction at its finest - the story of a white community wanting to hold on to standards and tradition despite the cost in human life, without realising the effect this is having on their sons who must carry on the fight. Of a black community whose sons serve on both sides, and which suffers reprisal and atrocity. Nowhere has the sheer weariness of war been better portrayed, with its numbing boredom interspersed with gut-wrenching excitement. There is bravery, cowardice, comradeship and, above all, the loss that comes from civil war.

Praise from the media:

'Stark and realistic.' - Mail & Guardian

'Vivid, accurate, and often lyrical.' - Personality Magazine

'On a par with All Quiet on the Western Front or Henry Williamson's A Test to Destruction for its war writing; the equal of Mukiwa for descriptions of Rhodesia.' - W G Eaton - Australian Press

'Thrush has produced the best of the genre.' - The Citizen

'Fascinating. Throbs with authenticity.' - John Gordon Davis - author of Hold My Hand I'm Dying

'Clearest yet depiction of the Rhodesian bush war ... from both sides.' - The Star

To read a story sample, click on the book cover.

Genres: historical fiction; war fiction; political fiction; Zimbabwean history; saga.