Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood
by Alexandra Fuller

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Book Reviews of Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood

Book Review: Powerful
Summary: 5 Stars

So far 2900 of the 3500 white farms in Zimbabwe have been taken under the guise of land distribution.
The story is laced with wonderful dialogues, the result no doubt of Ms Fuller's love of reading in her media free environment and her years boarding at Arundel High School, a replica in Zimbabwe of the British Public School: "The focus is on a rigorous academic program and we will be expected to pass difficult examinations sent out from Cambridge in England" (p224).
She describes with deep affection a number of black Africans who worked for her parents. In Zimbabwe, there is Cephas, an astute tracker, and the son of a witch doctor. In Zambia, there is Adamson, the cook, with a joint constantly hanging from his fat lips, easing the pain of a daughter stabbed to death with a spear and another born with severe disabilities, not even able to walk.
Then there is the young Australian woman hitching in eastern Zimbabwe with no one around for miles. She wants a ride to where the Fuller's mineproofed Land Rover is going even though she is told by Dad that they are just going "'To the dogs, . . to the bloody dogs."
She describes the defiance necessary for survival, -- her Dad telling a Zambian border guard "Fergoodsake, either let us go, or shoot us," her Dad fully aware that shooting deaths are treated lightly, as accidents: "We say, `Acci-didn't. Acci-didn't stop. Ha ha" (p264).
She describes her Mum's coping with the deaths of three children and resorting to alcohol in desperation. She desribes her Mum's love of life, her efforts to rescue a spotted eagle owl, a symbol of bad luck to the Zambian men who broke his wing in an aborted attempt to kill him, and her bonding with Caesar, her big bay Thoroughbred.
She describes the terrors of the environment: "The hairs [of the buffalo bean] can stimulate a reaction so severe, so burning and persistent, that it has been known to send grown men mad, tearing into the bush in search of mud to alleviate the torture" (p110); Putzi flies "lay eggs on damp patches of earth or unironed clothes, burrow under the skin, the eggs becoming maggots, bursting into living boils, emerging as full-blown, winged flies" (47).
She is brutally honest. Describing her beautiful sister's London wedding to a Zimbabwen: "The little lump under the wedding dress, behind the bouquet of flowers, is my nephew" (p289).
She marries an American, a safari guide at age 23. When asked how she feels before the wedding she replies "a bit queasy", not because she is nervous but because she has "had a dose of hard-to shake-off malaria for the last two weeks" (293).
No doubt Ms Fuller's book will be turned into a movie, a movie that could rival Jamie Uys' film "The God's Must be Crazy".

Summary of Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood

Family & Childhood Books

• Books > Subjects > Biographies & Memoirs
• Historical
• Memoirs
• Specific Groups > Women
• History > Africa > Zimbabwe
• Social Sciences