WEALTH OF IDEAS

Title : The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe Author : Peter Godwin Publisher : Little, Brown and Company Year : 2010 I first bought a Peter Godwin book, 'Mukiwa', on June 21, 1997, in Sacramento, California. I was an employee at Borders, and I remember bragging to co-workers about how I had just discovered yet another African writer in the store's stock. Those were the days when you had to scour shelves for months, looking for African books that never seemed to show up, so you were then tempted to buy a second copy of 'Things Fall Apart' (we got an employee discount). Long story short, I was happy to discover 'Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa'. From the start, I have read Peter Godwin as a fellow African, for the power of his prose and his panoramic coverage of the Zimbabwean landscape. His narrative persona loves to describe Zimbabwe, the Eastern highlands, particularly Chimanimani. I liked this because the year before, 1996, I had discov...

Only on Saturday I discussed Peter Godwin with a Facebook (now real life) friend at the Sacramento Writers' Conference. When she found out I was from Zimbabwe she told me she had just finished reading an amazing book by a Zimbabwean author, entitled When Crocodile Eats the Sun . I knew the title but I had forgotten that it was written by Peter Godwin, but because we were talking about memoirs, I ended up telling her that I had loved Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa , a book which came out in 1997 (Harper), right when I was beginning to miss home. So anything that reminded me of home, food items, newspapers stories, books, anything, would have sufficed. Mukiwa was extraordinary in its balanced approach to the story of growing up in Zimbabwe, marketed by Harper Perenial as Africa. My friend said, "Well then, if you liked Mukiwa , you will love When Crocodile Eats the Sun." "I'll look for it, " I promised. Then today I visited Zimbabwe's Artsinitiates websi...