Sierra Leone Telegraph: 13 August 2026:
Tunde Pratt is trapped in a vicious rebel war in a foreign land, battling with his doubts and fears, searching for a way out. He blames himself for getting caught in chaos. But when he witnesses Namineh and her young daughter, Theresa, surrounded by marauding rebels, he overcomes his hesitation and risks his life to rescue them.
Together they flee through the African bush on a long road home, tormented by hunger, exhaustion and sickness, shadowed by the ever-present gunmen. Eventually they are helped by the friendly yet mysterious American businessman, Doug, who gets them to the border and apparent safety.
Tunde, Namineh and Doug hope to start afresh in the familiar, if dysfunctional, surroundings of Tunde’s hometown, Liberty. But war and turmoil are never far away and slowly surround them as they struggle to build a new life.
Thats the setting for Rough Road Ahead – a new gripping book by Sierra Leone’s writer and novelist – Paul Conton.
In Rough Road Ahead, Paul Conton delivers a relentless, deeply human West African war thriller.
Paul Conton is an award-winning novelist and educator based in Freetown, Sierra Leone. He made his literary debut with The Price of Liberty (Macmillan), winning the prestigious Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book (Africa Region) in 1993.
The international judging panel lauded the work as “extremely well crafted,” praising Conton for “the rich multi-dimensional quality of the narrative and especially … its ability to present human weakness from different dimensions.”
Drawing on over forty years of living in his native Sierra Leone, Conton’s writing is deeply shaped by the region’s turbulent modern history—spanning economic shifts, political unrest, violence and war.
In addition to his own creative work, he is the steward of his late father’s historical legacy, recently curating and republishing the definitive two-volume series West Africa in History, to ensure this vital regional narrative continues to reach a global audience.
Paul is not new to the literary world. His book – Battle of Freetown is his personal account of the traumatic 1998 attempt by Nigerian-led troops of ECOWAS to expel rebel forces from Freetown and restore the elected government of Sierra Leone.
A Day at the High Court is a short story about one man’s heroic efforts to regain possession of his property through the justice system.
Conton’s latest novel, Rough Road Ahead, returns to the high-stakes world of contemporary conflict to ask the enduring questions that drive his literary journey: Who am I? Who are they? Who are we?
Click here to get your copy now from Amazon:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rough-Road-Ahead-Books-Conton-ebook/dp/B0FH6D6SFM
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