Wilbur Addison Smith 🌐

Wilbur Addison Smith was born in Broken Hill, Northern Rhodesia (now Kabwe, Zambia), to a British cattle rancher father. Surviving cerebral malaria at eighteen months, he grew up exploring the African bush, hunting, and listening to campfire stories told by indigenous workers. He graduated in commerce from Rhodes University in Grahamstown and worked as a tax accountant while writing fiction at night.

In 1964, Smith published his breakout debut novel When the Lion Feeds, introducing the Courtney family saga set against the Gold Rush in the Transvaal and the Anglo-Zulu War. Over a fifty-year career, he published forty-nine bestselling historical epics spanning four centuries of African history, European colonization, maritime naval battles, and Ancient Egypt (beginning with River God in 1994). Translated into thirty languages, Smith was hailed by Stephen King as the ultimate master of historical adventure fiction.