In 1953 Hemingway and his fourth wife returned to the scene of his safari with his second wife in 1933. Look subsidized the trip with lavish fees: $15,000 for a picture story of the hunting, with photos by Earl Theisen, and another $10,000 for a 3500-word article that appeared in the magazine in January 1954. The government of Kenya, then a British colony, persuaded Philip Percival (who’d hunted with Teddy Roosevelt and with Hemingway on the first safari) to come out of retirement in the hope of reviving tourism which was being threatened by the Mau Mau rebellion.

After the safari, Percival, Theisen, Hemingway’s son Patrick, and his Cuban friend Mayito Menocal—who’d actually shot the leopard that Hemingway posed with on the cover of Look—went home, and Hemingway was left alone with his wife Mary and a cadre of loyal retainers. The action of this “fictional memoir” takes place from November 30 to December 20, at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro on the Kenya-Tanganyika border. In a letter to me of August 24, 1983, Denis Zaphiro, the game warden of the Kajiado District—who appears in the book under the affectionate nickname of G.C. (Gin Crazed)—described Hemingway’s habits and tastes: “Ernest was not all that interested in shooting—except lion. He did not, for instance, shoot or even want to shoot an elephant. After everyone had left, he preferred to drive around and look at the animals. He didn’t shoot his lion on either occasion. He loved Africa. He