Ewen McGowan has spent much of his life in Malawi. This account of his time there relates the extraordinary story of his efforts to rescue a 19-ton boat which his father-in-law had had built for cruising the 500km long Lake Malawi. Yet the ensuing battle against official corruption was a minor ordeal compared to coping with the brutal murders by bandits of Ewen’s brother and sister-in-law in neighbouring Mozambique in 1997. This is a vivid and colourful portrait of Africa at its most beautiful, and at its most dangerous.