I owe more gratitude than I can express to my friend Treena Maguire Jinnah for telling me about Zimbabwe’s secret art treasures, and thus planting the seed which grew into The Dragon Lady. Thank you also, Treena, for being the best research assistant in the world, for ongoing moral support, and for keeping me in coffee and wine while I wrote! And a thousand thanks to you and Jamille for making my visit to Zimbabwe so smooth and safe. Thank you, Gabe and Dan Latner, for sharing my Zimbabwean adventures, not forgetting caterpillar eating – you guys were the best! Special thanks to Luke Buchanan, Sophie Pretorius, Dr Matteo Moretti and Fiona T. Marondera for help and support with research.

Love and thanks go to The Prime Writers and the Mount Nellie Tea Club for your incredible support and camaraderie. To my family and my friends: thank you for always being there for me, for keeping me sane through all the highs and lows, and for understanding when I periodically need to retreat from the world to write. Special thanks to Julian Treger, Simone Lehndorff and Suzanne Goodman – they know the hundreds of reasons why.

Last but certainly not least, I would like to thank Adam, Imogen and Alexandra. You are the centre of everything.

A Note on the Author

A Note on the Author

LOUISA TREGER is a classical violinist, studied at the Royal College of Music and the Guildhall School of Music and worked as a freelance orchestral player and teacher. She subsequently turned to literature, earning a Ph.D. in English at University College London, where she focused on early-twentieth-century women’s writing and was awarded the West Scholarship and the Rosa Morison Scholarship ‘for distinguished work in the study of English Language and Literature’. Louisa’s first novel, The Lodger, was published by Macmillan in 2014. She lives in London.