Wilbur Smith was born on 9 January 1933, in Ndola, Northern Rhodesia. He was a Northern, Rhodesian-born British-South African novelist specializing in historical fiction about international involvement in Southern Africa across four centuries.
He gained a film contract with his first published novel When the Lion Feeds. He developed three long chronicles of the South African experience which all became best-sellers.
By the time of his death in 2021 he had published 49 books of which he sold over 140 million copies.
