A couple of weeks ago I posted about a book called Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa, by Peter Godwin, which I enjoyed both for the writing style and for the insights into the history of Southern Africa (specifically the transition from Rhodesia to Rhodesia Zimbabwe and ultimately Zimbabwe).
I just finished reading the sequel, When A Crocodile Eats the Sun. It starts in 1996 when the author returns to Zimbabwe during a family health crisis. This again is a memoir, and it tells the parallel stories of the declining health of the author’s father and the declining health of the nation of Zimbabwe.
Crocodile, much more than Mukiwa, is a book about politics. The story is being told by a white man who was politically aware during the events he recounts, and who has seen his family suffer as a result of the political and economic situation in Zimbabwe. That being said, it’s not a polemic. The author is a white African, but he makes clear that everyone outside of Zimbabwe’s political elite is affected, black and white. The primary emotion is not anger or even bitterness, but sadness, a profound sense of regret and “it didn’t have to be this way.”
Talk to me!