These loosely connected short stories describe fragments of an expatriate German familys life in British colonial Africa and a gradual transition to Britishness. A more-systematic memoir from the viewpoint of my mothers family is contained in the earlier Seven Maids, about seven generations of mothers and their eldest daughters. The current collection begins almost a century ago with my fathers early days as a shipping agent on the Gold Coast (now Ghana), - this books cover is based on one of his own photographs from that time. A later stage of my life in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) is enshrined in the general title Before-Before, an attractive idiom for the olden days, as was used by my Zambian cook, Andy.

These loosely connected short stories describe fragments of an expatriate German familys life in British colonial Africa and a gradual transition to Britishness. A more-systematic memoir from the viewpoint of my mothers family is contained in the earlier Seven Maids, about seven generations of mothers and their eldest daughters. The current collection begins almost a century ago with my fathers early days as a shipping agent on the Gold Coast (now Ghana), - this books cover is based on one of his own photographs from that time. A later stage of my life in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) is enshrined in the general title Before-Before, an attractive idiom for the olden days, as was used by my Zambian cook, Andy.

These loosely connected short stories describe fragments of an expatriate German familys life in British colonial Africa and a gradual transition to Britishness. A more-systematic memoir from the viewpoint of my mothers family is contained in the earlier Seven Maids, about seven generations of mothers and their eldest daughters. The current collection begins almost a century ago with my fathers early days as a shipping agent on the Gold Coast (now Ghana), - this books cover is based on one of his own photographs from that time. A later stage of my life in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) is enshrined in the general title Before-Before, an attractive idiom for the olden days, as was used by my Zambian cook, Andy.