The Girl Savage

Wilhelmina Silver leads a charmed life, running free and half-wild on the farm in Zimbabwe where her father works. But when her home is sold, she is torn from all that is precious to her - her best friend, her adopted monkey, her pet horse - and banished to an inhospitable boarding school in England.

Shunned by the other girls at school and floundering in a strange country with unfamiliar customs, Will is determined to make her way back home, whatever it takes.

Author Katherine Rundell draws on her own childhood experiences in Zimbabwe with beautiful and atmospheric descriptions of life on an African farm: Will’s sunny childhood is powerfully juxtaposed with her grey and dismal experiences in England. This is a promising debut novel exploring ideas of identity and acceptance, and issues such as loss and bullying through the eyes of a unique and unusual character.