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Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness (Thorndike Press Large Print Nonfiction Series) Alexandra Fuller Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness tells the story of the author's mother, Nicola Fuller. Nicola Fuller and her husband were a glamorous and optimistic couple and East Africa lay before them with the promise of all its perfect light, even as the British Empire in which they both believed waned. They had everything, including two golden children - a girl and a boy. However, life became increasingly difficult and they moved to Rhodesia to work as farm managers. The previous farm manager had committed suicide. His ghost appeared at the foot of their bed and seemed to be trying to warn them of something. Shortly after this, one of their golden children died. Africa was no longer the playground of Nicola's childhood. They returned to England where the author was born before they returned to Rhodesia and to the civil war. The last part of the book sees the Fullers in their old age on a banana and fish farm in the Zambezi Valley. They had built their ramshackle dining room under the Tree of Forgetfulness. In local custom, this tree is the meeting place for villagers determined to resolve disputes. It is in the spirit of this Forgetfulness that Nicola finally forgot - but did not forgive - all her enemies including her daughter and the Apostle, a squatter who has taken up in her bananas with his seven wives and forty-nine children. Funny, tragic, terrifying, exotic and utterly unself-conscious, this is a story of survival and madness, love and war, passion and compassion. |
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Long Walk to Freedom: With Connections (HRW Library) Nelson Mandela An international hero, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, and leader of South Africa's antiapartheid movement chronicles his life, including his tribal years, his time spent in prison, and his return to lead his people. 175,000 first printing. Major ad/promo. |
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Dont Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight Alexandra Fuller Alexandra Fuller was the daughter of white settlers in 1970s war-torn Rhodesia. Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight is a memoir of that time, when a schoolgirl was as likely to carry a shotgun as a satchel. Fuller tells a story of civil war; of a quixotic battle against nature and loss; and of her family's unbreakable bond with a continent which came to define, shape, scar and heal them. In wry and sometimes hilarious prose, she looks back with rage and love at an extraordinary family and an extraordinary time. Like Frank McCourt, Fuller writes with devastating humour and directness about desperate circumstances ...tender, remarkable' Daily Telegraph A book that deserves to be read for generations' Guardian Perceptive, generous, political, tragic, funny, stamped through with a passionate love for Africa ...[Fuller] has a faultless hotline to her six-year-old self' Independent This enchanting book is destined to become a classic of Africa and of childhood' Sunday Times Wonderful book ...a vibrantly personal account of growing up in a family every bit as exotic as the continent which seduced it ...the Fuller family itself [is] delivered to the reader with a mixture of toughness and heart which renders its characters unforgettable' Scotsman Her prose is fierce, unsentimental, sometimes puzzled, and disconcertingly honest . ..it is Fuller's clear vision, even of the most unpalatable facts, that gives her book its strength. It deserves to find a place alongside Olive Schreiner, Karen Blixen and Doris Lessing' Sunday Telegraph |
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HILL OF SQUANDERED VALOUR: The Battle for Spion Kop, 1900 Ron Lock The Battle of Spion Kop was fought during the campaign to relieve Ladysmith, South Africa, after the Boers of the Transvaal and Orange Free State had gotten a jump on the British Empire and besieged a British army in the town. It was the single bloodiest episode in the campaign, as well as a harbinger of the bitter and desperate fighting still to come in the Second Boer War. Spion Kop, just northeast of Ladysmith, was the largest hill in the region, being over 1,400 feet high, and it lay almost exactly at the center of the Boer line. If the British could capture this position and bring artillery to the hill they would then command the flanks of the surrounding Boer positions. On the night of 23 January 1900, a large British force under Major General Edward Woodgate was dispatched to secure the height, with Lt. Colonel Alexander Thorneycroft selected to lead the initial assault. However, the Boers refused to give up the position and a bitter two days of fighting ensued. In the initial darkness the British mistakenly entrenched at the center of the hill instead of the crest, and suffered horribly from Boer marksmen clinging to the periphery. Suffering badly themselves, the Boers were finally inclined to admit defeat when they discovered that the British had retreated, leaving behind their many dead. Yet, in light of the devastation wrought on both sides, the British were finally able to rally and relieve Ladysmith four weeks later. Ron Lock, esteemed author of many Zulu warfare histories, brings to life this bitter and previously overlooked campaign in vivid and complete detail, with supporting sources including then-journalist Winston Churchill's battle report, as well as many previously unpublished illustrations and 6 newly commissioned maps. His account will be valuable to both historians and strategists wanting to better understand this difficult and devastating conflict. REVIEWS "... a wonderful addition to the bookshelves not only of enthusiasts in the Anglo-Boer War but anybody with an interest in military history." Guild of Battlefield Guides Member Tony Scott |
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When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa Peter Godwin 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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The Last Resort: A Memoir of Mischief and Mayhem on a Family Farm in Africa Douglas Rogers Thrilling, heartbreaking, and, at times, absurdly funny, The Last Resort is a remarkable true story about one family in a country under siege and a testament to the love, perseverance, and resilience of the human spirit.
Born and raised in Zimbabwe, Douglas Rogers is the son of white farmers living through that country’s long and tense transition from postcolonial rule. He escaped the dull future mapped out for him by his parents for one of adventure and excitement in Europe and the United States. But when Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe launched his violent program to reclaim white-owned land and Rogers’s parents were caught in the cross fire, everything changed. Lyn and Ros, the owners of Drifters–a famous game farm and backpacker lodge in the eastern mountains that was one of the most popular budget resorts in the country–found their home and resort under siege, their friends and neighbors expelled, and their lives in danger. But instead of leaving, as their son pleads with them to do, they haul out a shotgun and decide to stay.
On returning to the country of his birth, Rogers finds his once orderly and progressive home transformed into something resembling a Marx Brothers romp crossed with Heart of Darkness: pot has supplanted maize in the fields; hookers have replaced college kids as guests; and soldiers, spies, and teenage diamond dealers guzzle beer at the bar.
And yet, in spite of it all, Rogers’s parents–with the help of friends, farmworkers, lodge guests, and residents–among them black political dissidents and white refugee farmers–continue to hold on. But can they survive to the end?
In the midst of a nation stuck between its stubborn past and an impatient future, Rogers soon begins to see his parents in a new light: unbowed, with passions and purpose renewed, even heroic. And, in the process, he learns that the "big story" he had relentlessly pursued his entire adult life as a roving journalist and travel writer was actually happening in his own backyard.
Evoking elements of The Tender Bar and Absurdistan, The Last Resort is an inspiring, coming-of-age tale about home, love, hope, responsibility, and redemption. An edgy, roller-coaster adventure, it is also a deeply moving story about how to survive a corrupt Third World dictatorship with a little innovation, humor, bribery, and brothel management.
From the Hardcover edition. |
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Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier Alexandra Fuller When Alexandra ("Bo") Fuller was home in Zambia a few years ago, visiting her parents for Christmas, she asked her father about a nearby banana farmer who was known for being a "tough bugger." Her father's response was a warning to steer clear of him; he told Bo: "Curiosity scribbled the cat." Nonetheless, Fuller began her strange friendship with the man she calls K, a white African and veteran of the Rhodesian war. With the same fiercely beautiful prose that won her acclaim for Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, Fuller here recounts her friendship with K. K is, seemingly, a man of contradictions: tattooed, battle scarred, and weathered by farm work, he is a lion of a man, feral and bulletproof. Yet he is also a born-again Christian, given to weeping when he recollects his failed romantic life, and more than anything else welling up inside with memories of battle. For his war, like all wars, was a brutal one, marked by racial strife, jungle battles, unimaginable tortures, and the murdering of innocent civilians—and K, like all the veterans of the war, has blood on his hands. Driven by K's memories, Fuller and K decide to enter the heart of darkness in the most literal way—by traveling from Zambia through Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) and Mozambique to visit the scenes of the war and to meet other veterans. It is a strange journey into the past, one marked at once by somber reflections and odd humor and featuring characters such as Mapenga, a fellow veteran who lives with his pet lion on a little island in the middle of a lake and is known to cope with his personal demons by refusing to speak for days on end. What results from Fuller's journey is a remarkably unbiased and unsentimental glimpse of men who have killed, mutilated, tortured, and scrambled to survive during wartime and who now must attempt to live with their past and live past their sins. In these men, too, we get a glimpse of life in Africa, a land that besets its creatures with pests, plagues, and natural disasters, making the people there at once more hardened and more vulnerable than elsewhere. Scribbling the Cat is an engrossing and haunting look at war, Africa, and the lines of sanity. |
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The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe Peter Godwin In 2008, memoirist and journalist Peter Godwin secretly returned to his native Zimbabwe after its notoriously tyrannical leader, Robert Mugabe, lost an election. The decision was severely risky--foreign journalists had been banned to prevent the world from seeing a corrupt leader's refusal to cede power. Zimbabweans have named this period, simply, The Fear.
Godwin bears witness to the torture bases, the burning villages, the opposition leaders in hiding, the last white farmers, and the churchmen and diplomats putting their own lives on the line to stop the carnage. Told with a brilliant eye for detail, THE FEAR is a stunning personal account of a people laid waste by a despot and, armed with nothing but a desire to be free, their astonishing courage and resilience. |
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A History of South Africa Leonard Thompson A revised edition of a history of South Africa which focuses on the experiences of the black inhabitants from the earliest known human settlement through to the present day. Includes a new chapter on South Africa's transition from a racist political order to a democratic one. Last published in 1992. |
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Slave Species Of God Michael Tellinger South African author Michael Tellinger has caused quite a stir with his highly controversial epic on the origins of humankind. Slave species of god has now become a real cult epic with readers in over 20 countries. Since its release it has become a steady bestseller in South Africa and a constant good seller in the USA.
Tellinger takes the reader on a remarkable odyssey through our human prehistory and draws startling analogies between new discoveries in science, astronomy, genetic engineering and ancient archeological finds, only to point out that most of what we were taught is in fact very questionable.
The book reflects a high level of research and investigates a variety of interesting subjects ranging from human nature to human cloning and bravely reevaluates the existing religious dogma enslaving humankind to this day.
The arguments are simple and refreshing supported by startling scientific evidence. The question of who we are and where we come from takes on a new meaning as we discover the real possibility that our DNA may have been tampered with at the point of our creation.
The book has been praised by readers and academics from around the world as a worthy successor to the genre that deals with this subject. Slave Species of god is highly recommended to those looking for explicit answers to the seemingly chaotic state of our modern world.
• What do we really know about our human origins?
• Where did humankind suddenly appear from around 250 000 years ago?
• Why has humankind been so obsessed with GOLD since the earliest of time?
• Why is the FLYING SERPENT the creator god in most mythologies?
• Why do we humans only use less than 3% of our DNA? …Less than any other species…
Media Reviews:
“A remarkable book” George Noory – Coast to Coast – USA.
"This will be an American bestseller. Once I started reading I could not stop"
Rob McConnell - TalkStar Radio Network.
"Get hold of this book and devour – If you are a scholar of life this book should be your companion!" Fiona Ramsay - SAfm Nationwide Radio
"One of the most riveting books I have ever read. Non-fiction written with the fast pace of a best-seller novel. It asks and answers questions that we were taught should not be asked. The author’s passion absorbs the reader from page 1." Glenn Lewington - World Today, SABC3 TV
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The best of Michael Moore and Dan brown crash together to challenge your educated beliefs and open your mind to new possibilities. With his impeccable research, Tellinger introduces us to aspects of human history that I, for one, had never known existed...or even thought about. "Slave Species of god" is so much more than an eye opening story that tugs at your educated beliefs, it is an entertaining and captivating read. Michael Tellinger takes us beyond our taught beliefs and leads us on a quest for the truth based on scientific fact - a journey totally unlike anything we have been taught to believe. What a trip! What a read!" Francois Vorster – Ananzi.co.za
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