Vanessa Henman, a brittle middle-aged British writer, is attending a Pan-African Writers’ Conference in Uganda.

She decides to pay her former cleaner, Mary Tendo, a surprise visit. But Mary, now the Executive Housekeeper of the Sheraton Hotel in Kampala, has secretly borrowed Vanessa’s ex-husband Trevor, a plumber, and taken him to her home village to help build a well.

Vanessa decides instead to take a trip into Bwindi Impenetrable Forest to see the mountain gorillas. But she manages to insult her driver so much that he leaves her in the lurch, and as war threatens Bwindi from the Congo side of the border, it’s up to Trevor and Mary to come to her aid.

A hilarious comedy of cultural errors.

Praise for My Driver

What is wonderful about this book is the panache and fluency of the writing. It’s as if the ‘exotic’ locations … have set something free in her. Her descriptions of the Ugandan landscape, in its electrifying see-saw between breathtaking beauty and unknowable terror, are very powerfully done - with a watercolorist’s delicacy and confident sweep … the energy and verve of the prose is impressive throughout … Maggie has never written better.”

Rose Tremain