When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa
by:
Peter Godwin (author)
Hailed by reviewers as "powerful," "haunting" and "a tour de force of personal journalism," When A Crocodile Eats the Sun is the unforgettable story of one man's struggle to discover his past and come to terms with his present. Award winning author and journalist Peter Godwin writes with pathos...
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Hailed by reviewers as "powerful," "haunting" and "a tour de force of personal journalism," When A Crocodile Eats the Sun is the unforgettable story of one man's struggle to discover his past and come to terms with his present. Award winning author and journalist Peter Godwin writes with pathos and intimacy about Zimbabwe's spiral into chaos and, along with it, his family's steady collapse. This dramatic memoir is a searing portrait of unspeakable tragedy and exile, but it is also vivid proof of the profound strength of the human spirit and the enduring power of love."In the tradition of Rian Malan and Philip Gourevitch, a deeply moving book about the unknowability of an Africa at once thrilling and grotesque. In elegant, elegiac prose, Godwin describes his father's illness and death in Zimbabwe against the backdrop of Mugabe's descent into tyranny. His parent's waning and the country's deterioration are entwined so that personal and political tragedy become inseparable, each more profound for the presence of the other" -- Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon"A fascinating, heartbreaking, deeply illuminating memoir that has the shape and feel of a superb novel." -Kurt Anderson, author of Heydey
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780316018715 (0316018716)
ASIN: 316018716
Publish date: April 10th 2008
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Pages no: 340
Edition language: English
Category:
Non Fiction,
Travel,
Autobiography,
Memoir,
Biography,
History,
Cultural,
Africa,
Book Club,
Biography Memoir,
World War II,
Holocaust
Extremely well-written story about family, identity, and what we owe each other, set against the backdrop of Zimbabwe and Mugabe's dictatorship.
I was debating on whether to read this book, When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa, or the author's book on his childhood growing up in Rhodesia Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africafirst. This one focuses upon his father's life in Zimbabwe, and how he ended up there. I believe I made the wrong ...
Godwin's memoir of growing up in Zimbabwe is a good companion piece to Fuller's Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood; like Fuller's autobiography, Godwin's works best in the childhood segments. Godwin captures changing attitudes and moods over time and shows the sociopolitical ch...
An exceptional memoir--fascinating, insightful, moving, and completely engrossing.
I didn’t expect this book to be quite so personal or so much about the author’s relationship with his parents and their history. It did give quite a look at what life was like in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. I had heard in the news of the take-over of the white farms in Zimbabwe and the unbelievable inflation...