Tick Bite Fever by David Bennun: book review

Tick Bite Fever (2003) is David Bennun’s memoir about his childhood: a British boy growing up in Kenya, from 5-21 years of age, in the 1970s and 80s.

Most of the tales are about his schooling and the adventures that school boys get up to, such as the many pranks and jokes with other children.

Many tales include an animal or two – such as a lion in the camp site and the baboon burglar. He writes of the wildlife: to be viewed, those that attack humans, and those those humans can eat. There are many hairy, scarey, and comical animal tales in this book.

Bennun tells of the national radio station that has only three records. Whether true, or whether it is a case of an unreliable memory, is not the point. Anything he writes is sure to make readers remember their own schooldays and laugh out loud.

This is not a conventional memoir, although it is chronological and it does mention historic and political events. More often, it reflects a wonderfully funny reminiscent mood, as if readers are friends collected around the dinner table. His style, though well-written, is very much in the British vernacular, and a comical one at that.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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