When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa
by Peter Godwin
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Book Summary Information
Author: Peter GodwinEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-04-10
ISBN: 0316018716
Number of pages: 341
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Book Reviews of When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa
Book Review: Heart-breaking and deeply moving
Summary: 5 Stars
Peter Godwin was born in Rhodesia, and in 1996 he published 'Makiwa', a gripping account of how he grew up in that country. He was conscripted into the Rhodesian army to fight against the independence movement, by which time he felt that he was fighting in an unjust cause. He eventually got to England, became a journalist, and in 1981, now based in the United States, he returned to what in 1980 had become independent Zimbabwe, partly because his parents were still living there and partly because he loved the country and its people. But he now had to record that the new government of Robert Mugabe was more savage than the white government had been and was carrying out bloody suppression in Matabeleland - a sign of things to come. Godwin's reporting at that time made him persona non grata and he had to leave Zimbabwe again, though he was able to return after Mugabe had `stabilized' the country with the so-called Unity Accord in 1987.
This second volume, first published in 2006, is an account of several later visits, beginning with one in 1996. In the chapters relating to 1996, 1997 and 1998, Mugabe's dictatorship is not central to his account, though of course he is aware of it; but he is more concerned with the quite non-political aspects of his family's life. At this time Mugabe had not yet whipped up anti-white agitation. Indeed he had for years encouraged white people to stay and help the Zimbabwean economy. In fact, in the year 2000, "78% of white farmers were on property they had purchased after independence, only when that land had first been offered to -and turned down by - the government, as was required by law" (p.56).
Godwin's next visit was in 2000. That year Mugabe wanted to change the constitution to allow him another 12 years in power; and this change had to be ratified by a referendum. To get the new constitution accepted, he inserted in it a law allowing the seizure of white-owned farm land for redistribution to black peasants (though in fact most of it went to his cronies). His instrument for this were the so-called war veterans, and violence against whites now took off, under such thugs as those calling themselves `Hitler' Hunzvi and `Stalin Mau Mau'. When Mugabe lost the referendum, he unleashed violence also against Tsvangirai's newly created Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
In 2001 there was a total eclipse of the sun over Zimbabwe, and, unusually, there was another one in 2002. The folklore expression for this is that `a crocodile eats the sun', and it is considered the worst of omens. Godwin now chronicles in the most graphic manner the increasing horror of Mugabe's appalling regime and the descent of Zimbabwe into chaos and lawlessness: the ruin of agriculture; the displacement of millions of black farm workers; famine; the government's deliberate withholding of food supplies from areas where the opposition is strong; hyper-inflation; casual murders and robberies, with the police either unwilling to intervene or actually participating in them. Among the many grotesque vignettes: cemeteries plundered, patches of maize planted between the graves, and befouled with excrement; the RSPCA being given permission to evacuate tortured animals from farms - when their white owners are not allowed to leave their besieged homes. Godwin is there during the General Strike of 2003 and its brutal suppression.
But this is not only a journalist's book about Zimbabwe. It is also a touching story of a loving family. The scenes with his gallant and now impoverished, sick and aged parents - who, beleaguered as they are, refuse to leave Zimbabwe - are deeply moving. And there is an unexpected dimension. On a visit in 2001, when he is in his forties, Peter Godwin learns that his father, George, now 77, was not in fact the reserved Anglo-African he had always taken him to be, but was born a Polish Jew. Only now can George bring himself to talk and write about it. The revelation has an immense impact on his son, who inserts a couple of chapters to tell the story of George's Warsaw childhood, how, just before the war, he came to leave Poland as a teenager, without his family. George's mother and sister later perished in Treblinka. Peter Godwin had heard of Auschwitz and Belsen, but (somewhat surprisingly for a journalist) he had never heard of the other extermination camps, which he now researched and whose horrors he then describes.
This beautifully written book is a lament for Zimbabwe, but it is also a tribute to his parents, and it is dedicated to his father's memory.
Summary of When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa
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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