When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa

by Peter Godwin

Book Overview

After his father's heart attack in 1984, Peter Godwin began a series of pilgrimages back to Zimbabwe, the land of his birth, from Manhattan, where he now lives. On these frequent visits to check on his elderly parents, he bore witness to Zimbabwe's dramatic spiral downwards into the jaws of violent chaos, presided over by an increasingly enraged dictator. And yet long after their comfortable lifestyle had been shattered and millions were fleeing,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316018716
• ISBN13: 9780316018715
• Release Date: April 2008
• Publisher: Back Bay Books
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.77 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Complex and Brilliant

There is nothing superficial about this carefully detailed yet succinct memoir. It is a first hand expose of the Mugabe regime which has made Zimbabwe "the world's fastest shrinking economy" by looting the white farmers' land. It is a searing indictment of the corrupt regime and its minions. All is seen through the experiences of the author's parents, an elderly English couple who quietly suffer increasing hardships in the middle of a crazed situation. This is a country where innocent people can be gunned down for no reason at all. The author's older sister was killed just that way in an ambush at the age of 27, a few weeks before her wedding. Yet the parents insist on remaining in Zimbabwe. This may seem inexplicable, but I know many elderly people who would remain in their dangerous neighborhoods in American cities while around them was crime and devastation, rather than uproot themselves. It's not really that different, only far worse, because the government in Zimbabwe encourages and instigates the mayhem that afflicts the country. It would not be "spoiling" to reveal, as have the reviews, that the author discovers his father is not originally English, but a Polish Jew who has concealed his origins from his children. It is to the credit of the author that he does not flinch from recording his own repulsion at being a "hybrid", half Jewish. For years the white population was privileged in Rhodesia, waited upon by the poor blacks, as one of the photos captures. This does not justify what is being done to these elderly whites now, they do not deserve to spend their later years in a collapsed economy where pensions and life insurance are worthless, and their few possessions are always in danger of being hijacked by envious interlopers. In fact, their lives are in constant danger. Peter Godwin, the author, has written an invaluable memoir and expose. Zimbabwe is in anarchy, and living there must be a Hegelian nightmare.

When a Crocodile..gets under your skin

This is the best in a series of books I have read recently having to do with Africa up close and personal. I have recommended it to everyone I know, and pushed my book club into reading it, too. Mr Godwin is a particularly fine writer, with the descriptive powers of a poet. Finding that in a memoir that is also gripping and exciting is a potent combination. After reading this book I backed up, as it were, and read his earlier work "Mukiwa", which is also a fine read, and helps illuminate the later book, like finding out something about a good friend you never had known which makes later behavior more understandable. Nevertheless, When a Crocodile eats the Sun" stands on its own quite nicely and will stay on my list to recommend for a long time, just as it has stayed on my mind.

Not a box elephant, but a crocodile...

This book will break your heart with its sparely narrated stories of individuals of all colors and classes in Zimbabwe. Events of great irony, courage, tragedy and humor are related with understatement that increases our sympathy and our outrage at the injustices being done to both black and white since 1980 under Mugabe's rule. I picked up this book because a branch of my family settled in Southern Rhodesia sometime during the fifties; my cousin and her husband died there, as did my aunt who emigrated there from Virginia after her husband's death in the eighties. Communications from them were brief and free of political comment. I once asked why they did not write more and was told, "The mail is censored and it would be dangerous." I knew that they were moderates politically and were not in favor of the conservative Ian Smith government which determinedly maintained white minority rule from 1965 to 1980. I had no idea why this would be so dangerous, but now I know. The book covers the years between July 1996, when Peter goes back to Zimbabwe because of his father's failing health, and February 2004, when his father dies. Only during this illness does Peter learn that his father was born Kazio Goldfarb, a Polish Jew who met and married his mother in England after serving in World War II, and who emigrated to Rhodesia in 1949 as George Godwin, "a new man...fleeing racial persecution and war, mayhem and genocide." We come to love Peter's parents George and Helen. They are honest, fair, thoughtful and loving people who show unbelievable courage and inventiveness in dealing with declining health in a society that is sinking into chaos. Whenever things look dreadful, Helen makes fun of the danger by flapping her hands beside her ears in an imitation of a "box elephant" - when an elephant charges with ears flapping (like the flaps of a cardboard box), he's just trying to scare you. You don't have to worry unless the elephant's ears are flat against his head! Black humor (no pun intended) threads delightfully through this book which is so full of sadness - much of the humor from verbal snapshots of Peter's parents. Peter Godwin interweaves family history with much fascinating information about African/Rhodesian/Zimbabwean history. While reading it, I kept putting little markers in for things I wanted to remember, but by the end I had a forest of markers and wanted an index! That drove me to the Lonely Planet guide to Africa to get a thumbnail sketch of Zimbabwe's history and then to Wikipedia to look up Zimbabwe, Ian Smith, and Sir Garfield Todd. But you do not need this background to realize what is going on in Zimbabwe in the 21st century. Godwin witnesses many of the "land seizures" that began in 2000, in which productive commercial farmers who employed thousands of farm workers were attacked by gangs of war veterans (whose compensation fund had been raided by government fat cats). The senseless destruction of irrigation sys

Tragic but compelling

If anyone wants insight into the plight of white Africans, I would unhesitatingly point them to Peter Godwin's two books (this one and "Mukiwa"). As someone who was raised in Kenya, then spent time in Rhodesia, South Africa and Zimbabwe, but nearly 30 years ago bade farewell to Africa and have watched with sadness but without surprise as the continent has sunk deeper into crisis, his books ring many familiar bells. I long ago cut my last psychological links with Africa, because the Kenya and Rhodesia I knew no longer exists; Godwin's book is a sad reminder. It is easy for armchair critics to point accusing fingers at colonialism, and to say that whites created many of their own problems, and bequeathed to Africa many of the problems it faces today, but it's not as simple as that. Whatever white Rhodesians did, they did not deserve to be treated the way Mugabe has treated them in the last decade. Black Zimbabweans are by far the biggest losers, though, have suffered on a far greater level, and must regret the manner in which their country - once the great hope of Africa - has been driven into the ground by the venal and short-sighted thuggery of Mugabe and his acolytes. But it isn't just Africa or Zimbabwe - this is also a story about how bad leadership can lead to widespread social collapse, and bring out the very worst in human nature. Godwin's story about the way his family's maid Mavis was encouraged to turn against them is symbolic of how easy it is for even the best human souls to be turned by fear and intimidation. The case of Zimbabwe shows that the line between stability and anarchy, between security and insecurity, is often very fine. The story of Godwin's family has been repeated far too many times among white Africans, and there is an additional level of sadness in the way in which his father escaped Nazism and invested most of his life in Rhodesia, only to end his life surrounded by the horrors that now afflict Zimbabwe. Worst of all is the way in which Africa's leaders have failed to turn against Mugabe, or to criticize him. I still have friends and relatives in Zimbabwe (the doctor who gave Godwin's mother a new hip also operated on my brother, who ultimately died of peritonitis), and I hear that many of them think "When a Crocodile Eats the Sun" is an enjoyable read. Many are clearly in a state of denial - I read it in two sittings, and while it may have been a deeply compelling read, the story it tells is tragic. It mystifies me that those whites who have the option of leaving stay on in a society where death and misery are almost literally over the other side of the garden hedge. Godwin has a knack of letting the story speak for itself, and of avoiding making judgements or of bathing in self-pity. This and "Mukiwa" together will stand as testament to the plight of white Africans. I've read "Mukiwa" several times since it was published, and will certainly do the same with "When a Crocodile Eats the Sun". No-one who wants to

More on the Zimbabwe tragedy

This is an intensely personal memoir, mostly occurring during the last decade and about the author's family, his origins and his country. It is really three concurrent stories - the story of a man trying to take care of his elderly parents from half way around the world; the unexpected discovery of old family secrets and coming to terms with new origins; and a first hand account of the collapse, or perhaps better described as the `Decent Into Hell', of a country as it plunges into misery and madness. The indigenous people of Zimbabwe, the Shonas, refer to a solar eclipse as `when a crocodile eats the sun' and consider it a very bad omen. In the course of the book, there are two solar eclipses in the county, as events live up to the superstition. Besides the very personal considerations and traumas, the book reminds us of the now typical events surrounding Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe; the farm takeovers and their horrible consequences as the economy implodes, all services breaking down and leading to poverty and starvation throughout what was once one of the most promising countries in Africa. It is a book which gives one considerable pause for thought.