Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, by Alexandra Fuller (used)

‘What sets this book apart from other African memoirs of childhood is not only its refreshingly frank expose of white consciousness then, but its writing that is concise, swift, stylish and deeply poetic.” – Jane Raphaely, Femina Magazine

In 1971, when Alexandra Fuller was two, her parents abandoned their life in England and returned to what was then Rhodesia, and to the beginning of a civil war. By the time she was eight, the war was at its height. While her father was away for long stretches, fighting on the side of the white government, her mother worked the family farm with a passionate determination fuelled by a ferociously deep love for Africa.

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight is about living through a civil war and coming to a realisation that the side you have been fighting for may well be the wrong one. It is a story of optimism and faith; of one family's quixotic battle against nature and loss, and their unbreakable bond with a continent which came to define, shape, scar and heal them. Alexandra Fuller's debut is tough and unflinching. In wry and sometimes hilarious prose she stares down disaster and looks back with rage and love at an extraordinary family and an extraordinary time.

Condition: good