Obituary: John Gordon Davis: Rhodesian-born author of 'Hold My Hand I'm Dying'

1936-2014

John Gordon Davis, who has died in Spain at the age of 78, wrote one of the most famous novels to come out of Rhodesia, Hold My Hand I'm Dying.

Published in 1967, it sold millions of copies around the world and was made into a not very good film in 1989 with Christopher Cazenove and Oliver Reed.

Having had his first novel rejected, Davis was made rich and famous by Hold My Hand I'm Dying,his second.

That it was banned in South Africa because of its sexual content - a ban that was lifted only in 1983 - only added to its success. It's set in Rhodesia in the '60s and ends just after prime minister Ian Smith's unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) from Britain in 1965.

The militant Zimbabwe African People's Union and Zimbabwe African National Union have just been launched and employ gangs of young thugs to terrorise black people into joining.

"Hold my hand I'm dying" is what an elderly black police reservist says to a young white man who tries to help him after he has been set alight for being a "sellout".

UDI was hailed ecstatically by many white Rhodesians, but Davis made it clear in his novel that he thought it a monumental blunder that would lead to the country's ruin.

Davis was born in Enkeldorn, Southern Rhodesia, on January 21 1936. His father was a bank manager.

He went to school at Bishops in Cape Town and matriculated at Umtata High School in the Transkei.

He then went to Rhodes University in Grahamstown, where he studied political science. A fellow student, friend and later competitor was the future fiction writer Wilbur Smith.

Davis paid his way through university by working as a deck hand on British merchant ships and on Dutch whaling boats in the Antarctic during holidays.

His first novel, Cape of Storms, was based on his experiences.

After graduating, he studied for a law degree through the University of South Africa while working as the chief justice's clerk in Rhodesia and going on circuit with him.

After qualifying, he became an assistant public prosecutor in the magistrate's courts during the increasingly troubled years leading up to UDI.

He became Crown counsel in the attorney-general's chambers and began writing Hold My Hand I'm Dying, sustaining himself into the early hours on beer and cigarettes.

Once he had worked out where he was going with the book and how he was going to get there, he took three months' unpaid leave and rented a cottage in Inyanga in the eastern highlands of Rhodesia to finish the novel.

He never believed in Smith or his "illegal" Rhodesia and so, after UDI, he applied for a job as Crown counsel in Hong Kong.

When Hold My Hand I'm Dying became a runaway bestseller, he quit his law job to become a full-time writer.

He did not want to live in Rhodesia, which by now was in the middle of the raging bush war he had predicted, or in apartheid South Africa.

So in 1973 he bought a farm with a river running through it in Andalucia, southern Spain.

He married his Australian wife Rosemary (his second wife) in 1978, bought the first of several yachts and sailed with her around most of the world.

Back on his farm he wrote another 14 novels, working 14 hours a day from early morning to late at night. He took breaks for drinks, lunch and a siesta between midday and 6pm.

His novels took about two years each to finish, except for the one he wrote about South Africa, Roots of Outrage.

This took five years, including two years of research. It was not considered one of his better ones. He wrote in longhand, usually four or five drafts for each novel, with a 10-day break between drafts.

The Years of the Hungry Tiger, Leviathan and Typhoon were among his other bestsellers .

He wrote three works of nonfiction, Operation Rhino, Hong Kong and Through the Looking Glass, and taught creative writing on his farm.

He died of pancreatic cancer.

He is survived by Rosemary.

They had no children, opting instead, they said, for a life of adventure and, in his case, writing.