Linton is a Scottish-born actress and producer who currently lives in Los Angeles. Her online biography says she has degrees in journalism and law. She self-published her memoir, In Congo's Shadow , in April.

Thepublished an excerpt of a memoir about a woman's time spent volunteering in Zambia as a teenager. Louise Linton wrote about caring for an HIV-positive orphan and hiding out from murderous rebels. Sounds terrifying — except people say her story doesn't add up.

It also uses the phrase "darkest Africa" to describe Zambia.

The book's description bills it as "the inspiring memoir of an intrepid teenager who abandoned her privileged life in Scotland to travel to Zambia as a gap year student where she found herself inadvertently caught up on the fringe of the Congolese War."

The ridiculousness and exaggeration of this tale from "long angel haired" Brit in #Africa is as unimaginative as anything I've read lately

Linton's book had only attracted a bit of attention until theexcerpt ran. Then people, such as BBC Africa's Victoria Uwonkunda, began calling out what they said were objectionable stereotypes and questionable claims.

One major point of dispute is Linton's recounting of two raids by Congolese rebels.

"Taken by surprise, I spent a night huddled with others in an old straw hut, hoping not to be found as we listened to the engines of the rebel boats drawing near," she writes.

Linton writes of her concern for Zimba, the HIV-positive orphan girl with whom she forged a "special bond." (Linton describes her as a "smiling gap-toothed child with HIV whose greatest joy was to sit on my lap and drink from a bottle of Coca-Cola.")

Linton later recounts a second rebel attack that caused her to flee into the jungle, where "gunshots echoed through the bush and seemed to be getting closer."

She says she left Zambia after that attack.