In 1914, H. Rider Haggardadventure novelist, diplomat, farmer, lawyer, and, above all, renowned author of such classic and influential bestsellers as King Solomon's Mines and Shereturned to South Africa, the country that had fired his literary imagination, for the first time in a quarter century.

Haggard, whose work is today considered a prototype of colonial literature, barely recognized the Africa of his youth. The discovery of gold, the destruction of the Zulu kingdom, and the aftermath of the Anglo-Boer war had all radically transformed the political, cultural, and often...