Published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1960 at 15/-. (There was no information about the printing history in the H. and S. archives.)
A cargo ship capsizes on the coast of Somaliland, and a group of survivors are threatened by a local chieftain whose misdeeds they are likely to expose.
The book contains remarkably vivid descriptions of the terrain and culture of the coastal villages of what was then Italian Somaliland. The unacknowledged source for much of this was Peoples of the Horn of Africa: Somali, Afar and Saho by I. M. Lewis, published by the London International African Institute, 1955. There is no evidence that Canning ever visited the Horn of Africa himself.
 First edition 1960 |
 NEL paperback, 1968 |
 French translation, 1963 |
Index of characters, locations and themes (in preparation) |