This is the story of the body of Bwana Daudi, the Doctor, the explorer David Livingstone – and the sixty-nine men and women who carried his remains for 1,500 miles across the African interior so that he could be borne across the sea and buried in his own country.

This is the story of those in the shadows of history: those who saved a white man’s bones, his dark companions, who became his faithful retinue on an epic funeral march – little knowing that his corpse carried the maps that sowed the seeds of the continent’s brutal colonisation and enslavement. This is the story of how human bravery, loyalty, and love can triumph over darkness – and it is Petina Gappah’s radical masterpiece.