When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa

From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. In this exquisitely written, deeply moving account of the death of a father played out against the backdrop of the collapse of the southern African nation of Zimbabwe, seasoned journalist Godwin has produced a memoir that effortlessly manages to be almost unbearably personal while simultaneously laying bare the cruel regime of longstanding president Robert Mugabe. In 1996 when his father suffers a heart attack, Godwin returns to Africa and sparks the central revelation of the book—the father is Jewish and has hidden it from Godwin and his siblings. As his father's health deteriorates, so does Zimbabwe. Mugabe, self-proclaimed president for life, institutes a series of ill-conceived land reforms that throw the white farmers off the land they've cultivated for generations and consequently throws the country's economy into free fall. There's sadness throughout—for the death of the father, for the suffering of everyone in Zimbabwe (black and white alike) and for the way that human beings invariably treat each other with casual disregard. Godwin's narrative flows seamlessly across the decades, creating a searing portrait of a family and a nation collectively coming to terms with death. This is a tour de force of personal journalism and not to be missed. (Apr.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From The New Yorker Godwin, the author of a previous memoir about growing up during Zimbabwex92s war of independence, has written a sequel of sorts, tracing the collapse of his country in the course of the past decade (the violently destructive Robert Mugabe is the "crocodile" of the title) in tandem with the decline of his father. The memoirx92s central drama comes from the dying fatherx92s revelation that he is not British at all, as his son had always believed, but a Polish Jew, born Kazimierz Jerzy Goldfarb, whose mother and sister were killed in Treblinka. Occasionally, Godwinx92s attempts to knit the various story lines together seem a bit patx97"A white in Africa is like a Jew everywhere . . . waiting for the next great tidal swell of hostility"x97but he ultimately delivers a powerful narrative of grief and desperation, both personal and national. Copyright © 2007 Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker From Booklist *Starred Review* When journalist Godwin, author of the memoir Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa ^B (1996), learns that his father is gravely ill, he flies home to Zimbabwe. Against the odds, his father makes a full recovery, and Godwin seizes the opportunity to get to know both his father and his country better. He finds Zimbabwe in a sad state in the late 1990s. Disgruntled veterans of the Rhodesian war and mobs of young men are terrorizing and sometimes killing white farmers and seizing their land with the tacit approval of Robert Mugabe's government. Political opposition to the violence only brings more bloodshed as politicians from the opposition party are subject to similar attacks. On the personal front, Godwin's mother reveals a surprising secret: his father's real name is Jerzy Goldfarb, and he is actually a Jew born in Poland before World War II. Godwin is as enraptured by his father's history--and its effect on his own sense of identity--as he is by tumultuous Zimbabwean politics. Godwin seamlessly blends a journalistic quest to get at the heart of the problems plaguing his home country with a family memoir in this absorbing, powerful book. Kristine Huntley Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Peter Godwin is an award winning author and journalist. Born and raised in Zimbabwe, he studied law and international relations at Cambridge and Oxford. He worked as a foreign correspondent in Africa and Eastern Europe for The Sunday Times of London. He was founding presenter and writer of Assignment/Correspondent, BBC TV's premier foreign affairs program. He now lives in Manhattan and contributes regularly to National Geographic, New York Times magazine, and BBC Radio, among others. From The Washington Post Reviewed by Wendy Kann In 2000, Robert Mugabe, president of Zimbabwe, held a referendum to perpetuate his decades-long rule. He lost. Incensed, he annulled the results and set about destroying his suspected opposition. The economy imploded, and Zimbabwe fell into chaos. In When a Crocodile Eats the Sun -- a reference to solar eclipses, the most apocalyptic of African omens -- Peter Godwin, an acclaimed Zimbabwean journalist now living in Manhattan, masterfully weaves the political and the highly personal. An eyewitness account of that cataclysmic time, When a Crocodile Eats the Sun is also a tribute to Godwin's aging parents and a searing exploration of the author's own soul. The Godwins had immigrated from England to Africa in the early 1950s, where Peter's father, George -- nearly broken from the traumas of World War II -- reinvented himself, managing copper mines, timber estates and government transport. He was a fierce believer in fairness and integrity, sending letters decrying the political corruption of Mugabe's government to the state-owned Zimbabwe Herald under the pseudonym "Rustic Realist." His wife, Helen, an adored doctor at a cash-strapped government hospital, began work before dawn and treated more than 80 patients daily. The couple had three children. Jain, their eldest, was killed on the eve of her wedding in a tragic car accident; Peter was exiled in 1983 for breaking the story of Mugabe's massacre of thousands. Georgina became a Zimbabwean media darling, lately banished for her independent coverage, who now beams hard-to-hear news to her homeland from a lonely London studio. Mugabe's violent reclamation of mostly white-owned commercial farmland destroyed Zimbabwe's food supply, fostered lawlessness, and shattered the country's economy. Increasingly isolated as their friends flee the repression and hyperinflation, and barely surviving on now worthless Zimbabwean pensions, the elderly Godwins pointedly avoid buying much needed gasoline and medical supplies on a growing black market that they feel benefits only the privileged few. They would rather walk to polling stations and wait in long lines for hours in the hot sun to participate in ultimately farcical local elections. They eat mainly bread and cabbage but consider Peter's attempts to replenish their pantry using American dollars as vulgarly extravagant in light of the extreme poverty suffered by most of the country's inhabitants. As hundreds of the starving and unemployed spill into Harare's suburbs, a swelling camp of the indigent lingers just beyond the Godwins' hedge. Belligerent officials shoulder into their modest yard, claiming bogus infractions and demanding bribes. George is hijacked at his gate by men who beat him to the ground and then toy with killing him. As his parents' health quickly deteriorates -- George has heart trouble and gangrene, Helen has sciatica -- the frantic author risks slipping into Zimbabwe on frequent magazine assignments despite his exile status. He finds himself on the front line as Mugabe's murderous, pillaging mobs invade farms and smash agricultural infrastructure. An interview with an opposition candidate evolves into a nightlong ordeal fending off goons. Incognito at a political rally, Peter watches farm workers get selected for "re-education" while sullen armed teenagers prowl the remaining crowd, prodding people to raise fists higher, to cheer louder. And yet much of the book is wryly comic as Godwin describes the absurdities endured by Zimbabwe's white middle class. George's battered Mazda 323 is jerry-rigged with locks and alarms and practically roped to the side of their house. Peter, entertaining his parents with an outing to gawk at McMansions being built by political favorites, takes a wrong turn and finds himself on the prohibited dead end street leading to Robert Mugabe's new palace: "As we round the bend . . . we see that the soldiers have been reinforced by a dozen more. These new ones carry machine guns, and the brass bullets in their bandoliers shimmer with menace as they catch the sun. At least ten weapons are now pointed directly at us. " 'Oh, God!' mutters Mum. 'We're all going to be shot. I told you we should have gotten a new atlas, Dad.' " As Godwin faces both his parents' mortality and his country's collapse, he is tormented by the devastating loss of his own identity. One evening, while still mourning George's recent death, Peter stumbles across a roadblock. When he refuses to offer the expected bribe, an armed and angry policeman forces him to pull over and wait, possibly all night, as punishment. Minutes later, a bus rattles up and as sacks are hurled out for the police to plunder, an old woman pleads for her meager bag of maize. Godwin, fully aware he could be killed for interfering, cannot bear the injustice of the woman's predicament and offers money on her behalf. He is viciously ordered off, but we are left with no doubt at all that Peter Godwin has inherited George and Helen's fortitude. Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved. Read more