Coincidence: A Novel (29 page)

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Further Reading and Information

For a very readable account that touches on the LRA and the Gulu abductions, I recommend Jane Bussmann's
The Worst Date Ever—Or How It Took a Comedy Writer to Expose Africa's Secret War
, a book that pulls very few punches when it comes to exposing the murky presence of the LRA in Uganda.
The Wizard of the Nile: The Hunt for Africa's Most Wanted
by Matthew Green also provides a harrowing personal view of the search for Kony.

My favorite book about Africa is a beautiful collection of essays by the late Ryszard Kapuściński called
The Shadow of the Sun: My African Life.
Kapuściński was, for many years, the only Polish journalist reporting from Africa, writing for readers who knew little or nothing about the continent. His reports still transport me to the heat and the dust, the sounds and the smells of Africa in a way that no other writer can do.

There is a real coincidence authority, although I didn't learn about him until after this book was written. His name is David Spiegelhalter. He is Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk at the University of Cambridge. Speigelhalter is the co-author, with Michael Blastland, of
The Norm Chronicles: Stories and Numbers about Danger
, which explores some of the mathematics of coincidence and risk. By coincidence it turns out that we share a close mutual friend. I have yet to ask him to calculate the chances of that.

The best known philosophical treatise on coincidence is Jung's 1950 book
Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle
. However, I would hesitate to recommend this rather rambling account to any but the most ardent student of the discipline. Arthur Koestler's new-age exploration of the subject in
The Roots of Coincidence
was a popular read in the 1970s, attempting to bring together explanations for coincidence, parapsychology, and quantum theory. I'm sure both of these books would have been on Thomas Post's bookshelves.

Uganda is one of the best tourist destinations in the world for the adventurous traveler. The riverboat trip up the Nile to Murchison Falls passes locations where they filmed
The African Queen
and where Ernest Hemingway survived a plane crash. It is also a fantastic place to see hippos, elephants, and plenty of other wildlife. For intrepid explorers, I recommend the Bradt
Uganda
guide.

There are several charities that work in the countries affected by the LRA. Here are three you might want to consider supporting: War Child (www.warchild.com) works with children and communities in Uganda, helping displaced young people to rebuild their lives. SOS Children's Villages (www.child-soldier.org) supports more than 250 children of conflict and their mothers from their centre in Gulu. Invisible Children (www.invisiblechildren.com) is a high-profile campaigning group that tracks LRA incidents and warns remote communities of possible LRA attacks. They also work with rural communities providing personal finance training for women, ensuring access to safe drinking water, and helping with education and literacy.

About the Author

J . W. Ironmonger
was born and raised in East Africa. This is his first novel published in the United States. He lives in rural Shropshire, England, with his wife, Sue.

 

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Also by J. W. Ironmonger

The Notable Brain of Maximilian Ponder

Credits

Cover design
by
Robin Bilardello

Cover photograph © Peter Szawlowski/Getty Images

Copyright

First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Weidenfeld & Nicholson, an imprint of the Orion Publishing Group.

P.S.™ is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.

COINCIDENCE
. Copyright © 2014 by John Ironmonger. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Excerpt from
Goldfinger
Copyright © Ian Fleming Publications Ltd 1959 www.ianfleming.com

Reproduced with permission of Ian Fleming Publications Ltd, London.

First Harper Perennial edition published 2014.

ISBN 978-0-06-230989-1

EPUB Edition MARCH 2014 ISBN 9780062309907

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