| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Central to Fuller’s book is the intense relations between herself and her parents, a chain-smoking father able to turn round any farm in Africa, her glamorous older sister Vanessa, and the character who sits at the heart of the book, Fuller’s "fiercely intelligent, deeply compassionate, surprisingly witty and terrifyingly mad" mother.
Fuller weaves together painful family tragedy with a wider understanding of the ambivalence of being part of a separatist white farming community in the midst of Black African independence. The majority of the book focuses on Fuller’s early years in war-torn Zimbabwe, with "more history stuffed into its make-believe, colonial-dream borders than one country the size of a very large teapot should be able to amass." This is the most successful dimension of the book, as Fuller describes growing up on farm where her father is away most nights fighting "terrorists", and stripping a rifle takes precedence over school lessons. The sections on Malawi and Zambia are more prosaic, but this is a lyrical and accomplished memoir about Africa, which is "about adjusting to a new world view" and the author’s "passionate love for a continent that has come to define, shape, scar and heal me and my family." --Jerry Brotton --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Richard E Grant, author of Withnails
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Mum says, "Don't come creeping into our room at night." Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Right from the start, when the author talks about getting softly drunk with mother the night before returning to boarding school, and then smoking with her father while he commisertes with her because she won't be able to smoke at school, you know you are in for something different. And that was just the start of it.
I was also fascinated by the fact that the author was born in the same year as me, so all along I was comparing her life to mine and being astonished at how different it was. A very hard life at times, but I was also envious! I have been to Zimbabwe, as well as Botswana, Namibia and South Africa, but only on fleeting holidays. However I felt very drawn to the place and this book made the tie seem stronger, as though there was an actual reason for it rather than just my imagination.
Also, by the end of the book, I felt as though Alexandra Fuller was a friend. I was upset to loose touch with her and would love to know more about how she is adapting to life in the US as I really cannot imagine her there.
The story, as seen through the eyes of a young girl, describes the tough existence of a white farming family living through the Rhodesian civil war as white rule draws to an inevitable close. The family fights against drought, war and financial instability but, as the book starkly portrays, still live in a style inconceivable for the non-white community. The fact that racism was officially sanctioned and existed within the majority of white households is not concealed but given the perspective of the growing child.
Sadly, the family is cursed with the loss of three children out of five at young ages and the mother of the author finds solace through alcohol to relieve her mental anguish that such cruel misfortune has been wished on her.
On a brighter note, the wildness, smells and colours of the African landscape are brought vividly to life throughout the book making the reader yearn for an opportunity to share such experiences and to bring into context the priveleged childhood described.
The book is written in a style that makes you wish to finish it quickly and deserves to be re-read. It will serve as a worthy testemant to a period of time that was a true historical cross roads.
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Biography > Historical > 1901 Onwards
- Books > Biography > Historical > Britain > Military
- Books > Biography > Historical > Britain > Social & Urban History
- Books > Biography > Historical > Countries & Regions > Africa
- Books > Biography > Historical > Social & Urban History
- Books > Biography > Political > Countries & Regions > Africa
- Books > History > Countries & Regions > Africa > Southern > Zimbabwe
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
