The Scent of Eucalyptusis a coming of age novel set in Ethiopia in the early 1960s. Luke La Touche, freshly graduated from Oxford, resists settling down immediately into a career and heads instead for Africa to seek new experiences and a reprieve from the anxieties of Cold War Britain. Taking a teaching position in Addis Ababa, where his influential cousin James provides all the right introductions, he finds experiences a plenty. He is embraced by an expat community in the last throes of the colonial tradition. He is smitten with Caroline, a fiercely independent British woman, and befriends the rambunctious Simon. Everything changes, however, as he is drawn into the world of Yohannis, a young aristocrat who is part of an emerging generation seeking to transform Africa forever.

John Dillon is Regius Professor of Greek (Emeritus) in Trinity College Dublin, having returned there in 1980 from a period in the University of California, Berkeley, where he was a member of the Classics Department from 1969 onwards. His chief area of interest is the philosophy of Plato and the tradition deriving from him, on which he has written a number of books. This is his debut novel.