We meet online, separated by geographical distance, but it gives me a chance to catch a glimpse of Penny Haw’s study. I see beautifully appointed bookcases, a giraffe-patterned curtain, and the 2024 Philida Literary Award and the Star Award from 2022 on her desk.
Having worked as a journalist for many years, Haw is a hard-working and a disciplined respecter of deadlines. She walks her dogs in the morning, and runs, and leaves her study at 7pm. “Seven?” I echo, as she says it, and she assures me she does take breaks.
However, while she earned her bread and butter by journalism for three decades, Haw is now a successful full-time author. “I’ve never worked as hard in my life,” she laughs. Her latest novel is Follow Me to Africa, and follows the life story of Mary Leakey, the world-famous British palaeoanthropologist, wife of Louis Leakey.
I’m curious to know more: how she made the move into being a successful author with an overseas agent and a contract with a US publisher, Source Books. In the acknowledgment section of the novel, Haw writes that for as long as she could recall her mother used to say that “Penny loves making up stories”.
Haw explains: “I was just a super-imaginative child and I spent a lot of time on my own and I told stories to myself, aloud to my dogs and a cat growing up on a farm. One of these centred on a lawyer named Susan, and I had no lawyers in the family!” She also credits time spent listening to radio stories with her grandmother: “I think quite a lot of the incidents came from listening to the radio with my grandmother. I was very close to my maternal grandmother and she was a great reader and a great storyteller.”
She lost that as she started working, though it had always bubbled away in her. Her family were very supportive, though, and encouraged her to return to fiction. The first book she wrote was a children’s book, Nicko, the tale of a vervet monkey on an African farm.
This was followed by her first adult novel, a contemporary one called The Wilderness Between Us. Haw had planned to write another contemporary story centred on a vet when she came across the story of Aleen Cust, Britain’s first female veterinary surgeon, and decided that was the story she wanted to tell. This became her first historical novel, The Invincible Miss Cust.
“I read this story about this aristocratic English woman who decided to become a veterinary surgeon from the age of 10, and who was actually disowned by her own family for daring to want to be educated, and I wanted to write this story.”
This novel was followed by The Woman at the Wheel, a look at the life of Bertha Benz, wife of Carl, who built the first prototype automobile and whose name lives on in the Mercedes-Benz brand.
Follow Me to Africa is the next in the books about remarkable women.
“I read her [Leakey’s] autobiography,” says Haw. “What an extraordinary woman she was. What interests me about her is she spent a large part of her life in East Africa. But what really intrigued me was that she had so little formal education as a child. She had two years of formal basic education. She had no university degree. And then she became one of the world’s most distinguished archaeologists and palaeoanthropologists, it’s just the most amazing thing.”
Haw explains that it was Mary’s father, a landscape painter, who introduced her to prehistoric caves in France. “She came into contact with the idea of ancient people leaving clues behind, stone tools or fossilised bones. At a young age, you just become so curious that it defines your future and defines what you’re going to do with the rest of your life. And then also her love for animals. I really related to all that.”
There is a wealth of information about Leakey, from her autobiography to her academic writing, as well as Louis’ writing. It has its pros and cons, says Haw, writing about a woman who is closer in time than Cust or Benz. “It gives you wider scope to create the fiction side,” she says.
This leads us to talk briefly about historical fiction, and how fiction is sometimes “truer” than non-fiction. “Oh, I so agree with this,” exclaims Haw. “You know that whole thing about a historian tells you the story and a novelist brings it alive? I think that’s the joy of it, that you bring people close to the person. It makes it very personal, like you know how a person felt when they were drinking the water that had been infused with rhino urine, you know.” I chuckle, as Haw is describing scene from Follow Me to Africa when Leakey and the rest of the team was forced to do just that.
Haw has now finished a first draft of her fourth historical fiction novel and is working on edits and changes. This book is based on Caroline Herschel, a pioneering German astronomer born in 1750. The research has been a deep dive into Jane Austen’s novels to get a sense of the times. Dipping into her old copies, says Haw, as opposed to reading them in her university days, means she is experiencing them from a different perspective. “I also have such a great appreciation for her humour now.”
It’s soon time to leave Haw. She explains how she is having so much fun writing fiction, and how, though it doesn’t feel like work, it’s a busy life beyond the writing. This ranges from research to revising and responding to requests for publicity, to book talks and appearances at festivals such as the Franschhoek Literary Festival and the Kingsmead Book Fair. Busy, but fun and fulfilling, as Haw’s radiant smile attests as we bid farewell.
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