He battled cerebral malaria as an 18-month-old and beat the medical prognosis of certain brain damage — then Zambian-born adventure novelist Wilbur Smith went on to produce one bestseller after another."Despite the primitive medical facilities available in Africa in those days (1934), their prognosis proved correct; I survived and am now only mildly crazy. Which is good because you have to be at least slightly crazy to write fiction for a living," he says.Smith’s latest addition to his Egyptian series, Pharaoh , launched in SA this month and claimed the number one bestselling fiction title in the country within 12 days of its release. With worldwide sales of more than 40 novels in 26 languages exceeding 120m copies (a quantity that can "fill Wembley Stadium twice over") , Smith’s readership base is mostly in the UK, SA, New Zealand and Australia."The Italians love me — I’ve sold a lot of books in Italy — and the US is getting very big now," he says.Generations of readers have grown ...
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