[1] Of Welsh heritage, Gordon Davis was born in the town of Enkeldoorn in Southern Rhodesia (now Chivhu, Zimbabwe), to John Gordon-Davis and Iris Tilly.
He paid his tuition fees by working as a deckhand in the British Merchant Navy for two years, sailing around much of the world, and by joining the Dutch whaling fleet in the Antarctic.
He travelled around the Americas, worked for a spell at a gold mine in Northern Canada, practised law in Toronto and hitch-hiked and drove around the United States.
[6] Whilst working as a clerk for the chief justice back in Rhodesia and going on circuit with him, Gordon Davis obtained a bachelor's degree in Law from the University of South Africa.
[4] In the Rhodesian capital Salisbury, Gordon Davis had a chance encounter with adventure writer Wilbur Smith, whom he knew from their time at Rhodes University.
"[7] Moving to Hong Kong in 1966, Gordon Davis worked there as Crown Counsel during the political and social upheaval of the Cultural Revolution in nearby China.
Gordon Davis had written the manuscript in Rhodesia, finishing it in a rented cottage in Inyanga in the Eastern Highlands while on three months' unpaid leave.
The protagonist, Joseph Mahoney, is a Rhodesian-born, British-descended Native Commissioner who is studying law while working on a novel and having an off-and-on relationship with a young Afrikaans woman, Suzie de Villiers.
Mahoney considers his Ndebele adjutant Samson Ndhlovu to be a good friend, but their bond is straining under the clamour for Black self-government, which threatens to plunge the country into civil war.
Several novels address a specific social or ethical issue, such as whaling in Cape of Storms (1970) and Leviathan (1976), the plight of zoo and circus animals in Fear No Evil (1982), or the extreme right in The Land God Made in Anger (1990).
In that year, finding Hong Kong to be too expensive and not wanting to live in war-torn Rhodesia or apartheid South Africa, Gordon Davis moved to Spain with his wife.