When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa (original: 2006; edição: 2008)

Interesting book set in a thrilling setting. ( )

This was interesting about Zimbabwe. I did not like the present tense describing the past. ( )

Excellent if rather depressing book linking the author's father's decline in old age with that of Zimbabwe ( )

This book wasn't exactly like I expected. I thought it would tell the story of the authors childhood in Africa but then I realised that was the subject of his earlier book and I should have read that one first. As a standalone, this novel was engaging but some of the political descriptions about what was happening I didn't really understand because I knew nothing about Africa, let alone Zimbabwe.

Aside from that, learning about his parents and the sad way in which they had to live out their latter years was heartbreaking. Inflation had decimated their savings and made their shares and his fathers life insurance policy useless. It was a pretty bleak portrait Godwin painted of Zimbabwe in the early naughties, and I felt so bad for his parents.

His fathers Jewish background and story was so fascinating, I found it so sad how he felt like he had to constantly hide his roots as a Polish Jew because he wanted to protect his family in case the holocaust happened again - he believed that extreme anti-semitism would come back around.

Great book, I would have enjoyed it more if I had read the authors earlier book first though I think.

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3.5***

Peter Godwin was born and raised in Rhodesia. He was away at Oxford when the war for independence was finalized and the country became Zimbabwe. He returned in 1982, working for a time as a lawyer, but settling on journalism and moving away from his homeland. His parents remained in Zimbabwe, their failing health and increased frailty mirroring the slow destruction of a once-vibrant economy into anarchy and destruction. This is Godwin’s memoir of the years from 1996, when his father had his first heart attack, through 2004.

This was not what I was expecting. Somehow when I learned this was a memoir of a white African, I assumed it would be about his youth. But this is the story of an adult son coming to grips with the mortality of his parents, and learning something about himself as a man in the process. Along the way, Godwin examines the problems of the country he still calls “home,” though he may never live there again, nor even visit again. His brutal honesty about deteriorating conditions is an eye-opener to anyone who has ignored the relatively sparse newscasts about Zimbabwe’s “president” Robert Mugabe.

There really is no way for Godwin to tell his family story without also telling the story of Zimbabwe. I think he does a respectable job of journalistic reporting on the country and its issues, while still giving us a very personal and intimate look at his relationship with his parents and his home.
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