The Lioness is inspired by the unpublished diaries of Christel Ernst Onyewenjo.

East Berlin, 1963.

Twenty-two-year-old Friederike 'Rike' Schmidt is a literature student at the University of Potsdam. The mother of a two-year-old daughter from a relationship with a violent and dangerous man, at a political rally she meets Obiajulu, a Nigerian engineering student, in East Berlin for an exchange programme. The two young people could not be more different. Against all social convention, Rike and Obi start dating, and their love affair leads to the birth of a baby girl. They decide to get married and, once they finish their studies, to go and live in Nigeria, where Obi will be destined for a prestigious position. The first to leave will be Obi, but for Rike it will immediately prove almost impossible to leave Germany with two small children, as after the construction of the Berlin Wall, the tension between East and West is palpable everywhere. So, after a daring journey, on the run, with little luggage, two small daughters and no money, armed only with her resourcefulness and her beautiful Nordic looks, she manages to land in Nigeria.

The impact with Africa is traumatic, to say the least.

The only white woman, she immediately comes up against the language and cultural difficulties and, above all, the contradictions and problems that the country has inherited from the British colonial government. But she is not frightened, she learns the local language and becomes a reference point: teacher, doctor, and wife of a respected engineer of a large British oil company. The two daughters are joined by a third and Rike becomes part of the local elite, also composed of white people from various European countries: businessmen with their wives, diplomats, spies. And it is in these salons that she realises that the country is on the brink of civil war. She herself is contacted by a spy from the Soviet Union and is drawn into a dangerous friendship with a charming Italian journalist. On 6 July 1967, the Nigerian civil war begins, one of the bloodiest conflicts in colonial Africa and one of the most dramatic humanitarian crises of all time. It will be hell. Obi is called to arms as an officer and Rike must escape. Thus begins the journey of a courageous mother who, to save her daughters' lives, has to face the darkest side of being human, make dramatic choices and come up against all the contradictions and hypocrisies of a conflict in which the only winners will be the major oil companies.

The Lioness is the story of the love and courage of a mother who finds herself a prisoner in a conflict caused by the cynical calculations of the great Cold War powers who did not hesitate to condemn an entire continent to death, merely to serve their own interests.

In bookstores from February 2023