Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

Robyn Scott Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Robyn Scott
Photo: Karin Duthie

Robyn Scott

Robyn Scott Biography

Born in 1981, Robyn Scott was homeschooled in her early years by a mother who believed "children often learn best in unstructured situations, when they don't know they're learning. Especially if they're having fun." The Oxford educated mother also thought a syllabus stifled creativity and that she was just as capable of getting her children to university as anyone else. Evidently her theory proved right as Robyn's formal education did not begin until age fourteen after which she went on to earn a Gates Scholarship to Cambridge University. She received a M.Phil. in bioscience enterprise, focusing on the pricing of medicines in developing countries. She lives in London but works and travels frequently in Africa.

When it was suggested that she write a book of her childhood in Africa, the book that later became Twenty Chickens for a Saddle, she asked herself the same question her grandfather asked after publication. "Why would anyone care what we all got up to in a little town in Botswana?"

Fearing that no one could possibly be interested in the magical events she recalled as a child, she discarded her original beginning (her earliest memory of Botswana-- two fruit moths sipping grape-juice from her grandfather's lips) and instead wrote of black mamba snakes, the breaking of a crocodile's jaw and other mortal danger episodes, but found that she soon ran out of exciting adventures. It was then that her agent suggested she return to the magic of the moths and so began the delightful process of discovering how the quieter character-rich moments hovered discreetly in the shadows of grander memories.

Robyn Scott's website

This bio was last updated on 08/10/2016. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Interview

Robyn Scott describes her extraordinary childhood growing up in Botswana with no formal education until high school, which she explores in Twenty Chickens for a Saddle, and the charity that she and her family have started to help the women who care for AIDS orphans in Botswana.

Tell us a little about your memoir.
Twenty Chickens for a Saddle is most simply, to my mind, the story of a family, falling in love with and haphazardly pursing its dreams in Botswana, the most captivating and unusual of African countries. The book is also a story about living on the very fringes of convention, and about growing up as someone never quite sure if these fringes were exactly where I wanted to be. Beyond this microcosm, it is an account of a country battling the scourge of AIDS, meeting it varyingly with infuriating inertia and awe-inspiring acts of courage and fortitude.

What inspired you to write it?
I was not so much inspired, as dared to write the book. Near the end of my degree, I decided to try some journalism, and a friend introduced me to Patti Waldmeir, an FT journalist, who kindly offered to put in a good word for me at the newspaper if I wrote a short article that demonstrated I could write decently. “Write about being homeschooled in Botswana,” she insisted, despite my protests that no one surely was going to be interested in that. I was given an internship, and thought no more of the article until Michael Holman, ex-Africa editor at the newspaper, read it and declared that here was a book...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Books by this Author

Books by Robyn Scott at BookBrowse
Twenty Chickens for a Saddle jacket
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Robyn Scott but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

We recommend 9 similar authors

View all 9 Read-Alikes

Non-members can see 2 results. Become a member
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Small Rain
    Small Rain
    by Garth Greenwell
    At the beginning of Garth Greenwell's novel Small Rain, the protagonist, an unnamed poet in his ...
  • Book Jacket: Daughters of Shandong
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Daughters of Shandong is the debut novel of Eve J. Chung, a human rights lawyer living in New York. ...
  • Book Jacket: The Women
    The Women
    by Kristin Hannah
    Kristin Hannah's latest historical epic, The Women, is a story of how a war shaped a generation ...
  • Book Jacket: The Wide Wide Sea
    The Wide Wide Sea
    by Hampton Sides
    By 1775, 48-year-old Captain James Cook had completed two highly successful voyages of discovery and...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
Who Said...

Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.