Robert Ruark

Robert Chester Ruark Jr. (29 December 1915 – 1 July 1965) was an American journalist, novelist, and sportsman whose books about Africa — particularly Something of Value (1955) and Uhuru (1962) — made him one of the most widely read and most fiercely debated American writers of the 1950s and early 1960s. He wrote about Africa during the great convulsion of decolonisation — the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, the end of white colonial rule, the birth of independent African nations — from the perspective of a white American who loved the continent, knew it intimately, and held views about its future that were prescient in some respects and deeply problematic in others. He was also a superb outdoor writer whose hunting memoir Horn of the Hunter (1953) and nostalgic boyhood memoir The Old Man and the Boy (1957) are classics of their genres.

Life

Ruark was born in Wilmington, North Carolina, and grew up in the rural South — a childhood of fishing, hunting, and storytelling that he mythologised in The Old Man and the Boy. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, worked as a journalist, served as a Navy gunnery officer during World War II, and became a syndicated newspaper columnist whose combative opinions reached millions of readers.

He first visited East Africa in 1951 and was captivated by the landscape, the wildlife, and the culture of the white hunting community. He returned repeatedly, spending months at a time in Kenya, Tanganyika, and Mozambique, hunting big game and reporting on the political upheavals of the era. He lived hard — heavy drinking, relentless travel, punishing work schedules — and died in London at forty-nine, worn out.

Horn of the Hunter (1953)

Ruark’s first African book is a hunting memoir that recounts a safari in Kenya and Tanganyika with the professional hunter Harry Selby. The book is widely regarded as one of the finest hunting narratives since Hemingway’s Green Hills of Africa — and in some ways it surpasses Hemingway, because Ruark is more interested in the practical details of hunting (the tracking, the waiting, the shot, the aftermath) and less interested in performing his own masculine anxiety. The descriptions of landscape, animal behaviour, and the physical experience of hunting are superb.

Something of Value (1955)

Ruark’s most famous novel — its title taken from a Basuto proverb, “If you take away from a man his traditional way of living and do not replace it with something of value, expect him to steal and murder” — is set during the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya (1952–1960). The novel follows two boyhood friends — one white, one Kikuyu — whose lives diverge as the colony descends into violence. The novel was a massive bestseller, was adapted into a film starring Rock Hudson and Sidney Poitier (1957), and made Ruark one of the most famous American writers of his generation.

The novel’s depiction of Mau Mau violence was graphic and sensational, and it was criticised by African nationalists and liberal commentators as racist propaganda for the settler cause. The criticism was not entirely unfair — Ruark’s sympathies were with the white settlers, and his depiction of African violence was more vivid than his depiction of the colonial injustices that provoked it.

Uhuru (1962) and The Honey Badger (1965)

Uhuru (“freedom” in Swahili) continues the story of decolonisation into the independence era, following multiple characters through the political chaos and violence of the transition. The novel is more nuanced than Something of Value — Ruark’s understanding of African politics had deepened — but it remains the work of a writer whose perspective is fundamentally that of the white outsider.

The Honey Badger (1965), published posthumously, is Ruark’s most autobiographical novel — a study of a writer’s marriage, career, and self-destruction that draws heavily on his own life.

The Old Man and the Boy (1957)

Ruark’s most beloved book is a series of sketches about a boy growing up in the rural South under the guidance of his grandfather — learning to hunt, fish, and navigate the natural world. The book is sentimental in the best sense: it commemorates a way of life that was already vanishing and a relationship between generations that was characterised by patience, love, and the transmission of practical knowledge.

Collecting Ruark

Something of Value (1955, Doubleday) in first edition with dust jacket brings $40–$100. Horn of the Hunter (1953, Doubleday) brings $50–$150. The Old Man and the Boy (1957, Henry Holt) brings $40–$100. Signed copies are scarce — Ruark died young — and command significant premiums.