From Publishers Weekly
A classic is born in this tender, intensely moving and even delightful journey through a white African girl's childhood. Born in England and now living in Wyoming, Fuller was conceived and bred on African soil during the Rhodesian civil war (1971-1979), a world where children over five "learn[ed] how to load an FN rifle magazine, strip and clean all the guns in the house, and ultimately, shoot-to-kill." With a unique and subtle sensitivity to racial issues, Fuller describes her parents' racism and the wartime relationships between blacks and whites through a child's watchful eyes. Curfews and war, mosquitoes, land mines, ambushes and "an abundance of leopards" are the stuff of this childhood. "Dad has to go out into the bush... and find terrorists and fight them"; Mum saves the family from an Egyptian spitting cobra; they both fight "to keep one country in Africa white-run." The "A" schools ("with the best teachers and facilities") are for white children; "B" schools serve "children who are neither black nor white"; and "C" schools are for black children. Fuller's world is marked by sudden, drastic changes: the farm is taken away for "land redistribution"; one term at school, five white students are "left in the boarding house... among two hundred African students"; three of her four siblings die in infancy; the family constantly sets up house in hostile, desolate environments as they move from Rhodesia to Zambia to Malawi and back to Zambia. But Fuller's remarkable affection for her parents (who are racists) and her homeland (brutal under white and black rule) shines through. This affection, in spite of its subjects' prominent flaws, reveals their humanity and allows the reader direct entry into her world. Fuller's book has the promise of being widely read and remaining of interest for years to come. Photos not seen by PW. (On-sale Dec. 18)Forecast: Like Anne Frank's diary, this work captures the tone of a very young person caught up in her own small world as she witnesses a far larger historical event. It will appeal to those looking for a good story as well as anyone seeking firsthand reportage of white southern Africa. The quirky title and jacket will propel curious shoppers to pick it up.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-Pining for Africa, Fuller's parents departed England in the early '70s while she was still a toddler. They knew well that their life as white farmers living in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia at the time) would be anything but glamorous. Living a crude, rural life, the author and her older sister contended with "itchy bums and worms and bites up their arms from fleas" and losing three siblings. Mum and Dad were freewheeling, free-drinking, and often careless. Yet they were made of tough stuff and there is little doubt of the affection among family members. On top of attempting to make a living, they faced natives who were trying to free themselves of British rule, and who were understandably not thrilled to see more white bwanas settling in. Fuller portrays bigotry (her own included), segregation, and deprivation. But judging by her vivid and effortless imagery, it is clear that the rich, pungent flora and fauna of Africa have settled deeply in her bones. Snapshots scattered throughout the book enhance the feeling of intimacy and adventure. A photo of the author's first day of boarding school seems ordinary enough- she's standing in front of the family's Land Rover, smiling with her mother and sister. Then the realization strikes that young Alexandra is holding an Uzi (which she had been trained to use) and the family car had been mine-proofed. This was no ordinary childhood, and it makes a riveting story thanks to an extraordinary telling.Sheila Shoup, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
It is difficult for most people even to imagine the world described in this book, let alone live in it as a child: the nights are dark, scary, and filled with strange noises; the people welcome you and despise you at the same time; there is a constant anxious feeling burning in your stomach, which, you later realize, is fear of the unrest surrounding you. The British-born Fuller grew up in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), losing three siblings to disease as her father fought in the Rhodesian civil war and her mother managed the farm. She approaches her childhood with reserve, leaving many stories open to interpretation while also maintaining a remarkable clarity about what really transpired in her homeland, in her own home, and in her head. The narrative seems complicated, weaving together war, politics, racial issues, and alcoholism, but its emotional core remains honest, playful, and unapologetic; it hardly seems possible that this 32-year-old has so much to say and says it so well. In this powerful debut, Fuller fully succeeds in memorializing the beauty of each desert puddle and each African summer night sky while also recognizing that beauty can lie hidden in the faces of those who have crossed her path. Highly recommended.- Rachel Collins, "Library Journal" Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Fuller, nicknamed "Bobo," grew up in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) during the civil war, and she watched her parents fight against the local Africans to keep their farm. Fuller writes from a child's point of view, masking neither her family's prejudices nor their passions. Fuller's father, Tim, is a determined and strong man, married to Nicola, who is gradually cracking under the pressure of the civil war and also of the deaths of her children. The Fullers lost three children; only Alexandra and her older sister, Vanessa, survived. The losses take their toll on Nicola, who turns to alcohol to combat her overwhelming depression. After the white colonialists lose the civil war, the Fullers' farm is taken away, and they move to Malawi, where Bobo begins to get a sense of the life of an average African. But the overbearing Malawian government motivates the Fullers to move on, and they finally settle in Zambia. Fuller is a gifted writer, capable of bringing a sense of immediacy to her writing and crafting descriptions so vibrant the reader cannot only picture the stifling hot African afternoon but almost feel it as well. Writing a memoir powerful in its frank straightforwardness, Fuller neither apologizes for nor champions her family's views and actions. Instead, she gives us an honest, moving portrait of one family struggling to survive tumultuous times. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
“This is not a book you read just once, but a tale of terrible beauty to get lost in over and over.” —Newsweek

“By turns mischievous and openhearted, earthy and soaring . . . hair-raising, horrific, and thrilling.”—The New Yorker

“Ms. Fuller gives us . . . the Africa she knew as a girl, a place of cruel politics, violent heat and startling beauty, a land she makes vivid in all its ‘incongruous, lawless, joyful, violent, upside-down, illogical certainty.’” —The New York Times

“Vivid, insightful and sly . . . Bottom line: Out of Africa, brilliantly.”—People


Review
?This is not a book you read just once, but a tale of terrible beauty to get lost in over and over.? ?Newsweek

?By turns mischievous and openhearted, earthy and soaring . . . hair-raising, horrific, and thrilling.??The New Yorker

?Ms. Fuller gives us . . . the Africa she knew as a girl, a place of cruel politics, violent heat and startling beauty, a land she makes vivid in all its ?incongruous, lawless, joyful, violent, upside-down, illogical certainty.?? ?The New York Times

?Vivid, insightful and sly . . . Bottom line: Out of Africa, brilliantly.??People


Book Description
In Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller remembers her African childhood with candor and sensitivity. Though it is a diary of an unruly life in an often inhospitable place, it is suffused with Fuller’s endearing ability to find laughter, even when there is little to celebrate. Fuller’s debut is unsentimental and unflinching but always captivating. In wry and sometimes hilarious prose, she stares down disaster and looks back with rage and love at the life of an extraordinary family in an extraordinary time.


From the Inside Flap
In Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller remembers her African childhood with candor and sensitivity. Though it is a diary of an unruly life in an often inhospitable place, it is suffused with Fuller’s endearing ability to find laughter, even when there is little to celebrate. Fuller’s debut is unsentimental and unflinching but always captivating. In wry and sometimes hilarious prose, she stares down disaster and looks back with rage and love at the life of an extraordinary family in an extraordinary time.


From the Back Cover
“This is not a book you read just once, but a tale of terrible beauty to get lost in over and over.” —Newsweek

“By turns mischievous and openhearted, earthy and soaring . . . hair-raising, horrific, and thrilling.”—The New Yorker

“Ms. Fuller gives us . . . the Africa she knew as a girl, a place of cruel politics, violent heat and startling beauty, a land she makes vivid in all its ‘incongruous, lawless, joyful, violent, upside-down, illogical certainty.’” —The New York Times

“Vivid, insightful and sly . . . Bottom line: Out of Africa, brilliantly.”—People


About the Author
Alexandra Fuller was born in England in 1969. In 1972 she moved with her family to a farm in Rhodesia. After that country’s civil war in 1981, the Fullers moved first to Malawi, then to Zambia. Fuller received a B.A. from Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada. In 1994, she moved to Wyoming, where she still lives. She has two children.


From the Hardcover edition.


Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1

rhodesia, 1976

Mum says, "Don't come creeping into our room at night."

They sleep with loaded guns beside them on the bedside rugs. She
says, "Don't startle us when we're sleeping."

"Why not?"

"We might shoot you."

"Oh."

"By mistake."

"Okay." As it is, there seems a good enough chance of getting shot on
purpose. "Okay, I won't."

So if I wake in the night and need Mum and Dad, I call Vanessa,
because she isn't armed. "Van! Van, hey!" I hiss across the room
until she wakes up. And then Van has to light a candle and escort me
to the loo, where I pee sleepily into the flickering yellow light and
Van keeps the candle high, looking for snakes and scorpions and
baboon spiders.

Mum won't kill snakes because she says they help to keep the rats
down (but she rescued a nest of baby mice from the barns and left
them to grow in my cupboard, where they ate holes in the family's
winter jerseys). Mum won't kill scorpions either; she catches them
and lets them go free in the pool and Vanessa and I have to rake the
pool before we can swim. We fling the scorps as far as we can across
the brown and withering lawn, chase the ducks and geese out, and then
lower ourselves gingerly into the pool, whose sides wave green and
long and soft and grasping with algae. And Mum won't kill spiders
because she says it will bring bad luck.

I tell her, "I'd say we have pretty rotten luck as it is."

"Then think how much worse it would be if we killed spiders."

I have my feet off the floor when I pee.

"Hurry up, man."

"Okay, okay."

"It's like Victoria Falls."

"I really had to go."

I have been holding my pee for a long, long time and staring out the
window to try and guess how close it is to morning. Maybe I could
hold it until morning. But then I notice that it is the
deep-black-sky quiet time of night, which is the halfway time between
the sun setting and the sun rising when even the night animals are
quiet-as if they, like day animals, take a break in the middle of
their work to rest. I can't hear Vanessa breathing; she has gone into
her deep middle-of-the-night silence. Dad is not snoring nor is he
shouting in his sleep. The baby is still in her crib but the smell of
her is warm and animal with wet nappy. It will be a long time until
morning.



Then Vanessa hands me the candle-"You keep boogies for me now"-and she pees.

"See, you had to go, too."

"Only 'cos you had to."

There is a hot breeze blowing through the window, the cold sinking
night air shifting the heat of the day up. The breeze has trapped
midday scents; the prevalent cloying of

the leach field, the green soap which has spilled out from the
laundry and landed on the patted-down red earth, the wood smoke from
the fires that heat our water, the boiled-meat smell of dog food.

We debate the merits of flushing the loo.

"We shouldn't waste the water." Even when there isn't a drought we
can't waste water, just in case one day there is a drought. Anyway,
Dad has said, "Steady on with the loo paper, you kids. And don't
flush the bloody loo all the time. The leach field can't handle it."

"But that's two pees in there."

"So? It's only pee."

"Agh sis, man, but it'll be smelly by tomorrow. And you peed as much
as a horse."

"It's not my fault."

"You can flush."

"You're taller."

"I'll hold the candle."

Van holds the candle high. I lower the toilet lid, stand on it and
lift up the block of hardwood that covers the cistern, and reach down
for the chain. Mum has glued a girlie-magazine picture to this block
of hardwood: a blond woman in few clothes, with breasts like naked
cow udders, and she's all arched in a strange pouty contortion, like
she's got backache. Which maybe she has, from the weight of the
udders. The picture is from Scope magazine.



We aren't allowed to look at Scope magazine.

"Why?"

"Because we aren't those sorts of people," says Mum.

"But we have a picture from Scope magazine on the loo lid."

"That's a joke."

"Oh." And then, "What sort of joke?"

"Stop twittering on."

A pause. "What sort of people are we, then?"

"We have breeding," says Mum firmly.

"Oh." Like the dairy cows and our special expensive bulls (who are
named Humani, Jack, and Bulawayo).

"Which is better than having money," she adds.

I look at her sideways, considering for a moment. "I'd rather have
money than breeding," I say.

Mum says, "Anyone can have money." As if it's something you might
pick up from the public toilets in OK Bazaar Grocery Store in Umtali.

"Ja, but we don't."

Mum sighs. "I'm trying to read, Bobo."

"Can you read to me?"

Mum sighs again. "All right," she says, "just one chapter." But it is
teatime before we look up from The Prince and the Pauper.



The loo gurgles and splutters, and then a torrent of water shakes
down, spilling slightly over the bowl.

"Sis, man," says Vanessa.

You never know what you're going to get with this loo. Sometimes it
refuses to flush at all and other times it's like this, water on your
feet.

I follow Vanessa back to the bedroom. The way candlelight falls,
we're walking into blackness, blinded by the flame of the candle,
unable to see our feet. So at the same moment we get the creeps, the
neck-prickling terrorist-under-the-bed creeps, and we abandon
ourselves to fear. The candle blows out. We skid into our room and
leap for the beds, our feet quickly tucked under us. We're both
panting, feeling foolish, trying to calm our breathing as if we
weren't scared at all.

Vanessa says, "There's a terrorist under your bed, I can see him."

"No you can't, how can you see him? The candle's out."

"Struze fact."

And I start to cry.

"Jeez, I'm only joking."

I cry harder.

"Shhh, man. You'll wake up Olivia. You'll wake up Mum and Dad."

Which is what I'm trying to do, without being shot. I want everyone
awake and noisy to chase away the terrorist-under-my-bed.

"Here," she says, "you can sleep with Fred if you stop crying."

So I stop crying and Vanessa pads over the bare cement floor and
brings me the cat, fast asleep in a snail-circle on her arms. She
puts him on the pillow and I put an arm over the vibrating, purring
body. Fred finds my earlobe and starts to suck. He's always sucked
our earlobes. Our hair is sucked into thin, slimy, knotted ropes near
the ears.

Mum says, "No wonder you have worms all the time."

I lie with my arms over the cat, awake and waiting. African dawn,
noisy with animals and the servants and Dad waking up and a tractor
coughing into life somewhere down at the workshop, clutters into the
room. The bantam hens start to crow and stretch, tumbling out of
their roosts in the tree behind the bathroom to peck at the
reflection of themselves in the window. Mum comes in smelling of
Vicks VapoRub and tea and warm bed and scoops the sleeping baby up to
her shoulder.

I can hear July setting tea on the veranda and I can smell the first,
fresh singe of Dad's morning cigarette. I balance Fred on my shoulder
and come out for tea: strong with no sugar, a splash of milk, the way
Mum likes it. Fred has a saucer of milk.

"Morning, Chookies," says Dad, not looking at me, smoking. He is
looking far off into the hills, where the border between Rhodesia and
Mozambique melts blue-gray, even in the pre-hazy clear of early
morning.

"Morning, Dad."

"Sleep all right?"

"Like a log," I tell him. "You?"

Dad grunts, stamps out his cigarette, drains his teacup, balances his
bush hat on his head, and strides out into the yard to make the most
of the little chill the night has left us with which to fight the
gathering soupy heat of day.



getting there:

zambia, 1987



To begin with, before Independence, I am at school with white
children only. "A" schools, they are called: superior schools with
the best teachers and facilities. The black children go to "C"
schools. In-between children who are neither black nor white (Indian
or a mixture of races) go to "B" schools.

The Indians and coloureds (who are neither completely this nor
completely that) and blacks are allowed into my school the year I
turn eleven, when the war is over. The blacks laugh at me when they
see me stripped naked after swimming or tennis, when my shoulders and
arms are angry sunburnt red.

"Argh! I smell roasting pork!" they shriek.

"Who fried the bacon?"

"Burning piggy!"

My God, I am the wrong color. The way I am burned by the sun,
scorched by flinging sand, prickled by heat. The way my skin erupts
in miniature volcanoes of protest in the presence of tsetse flies,
mosquitoes, ticks. The way I stand out against the khaki bush like a
large marshmallow to a gook with a gun. White. African. White-African.

"But what are you?" I am asked over and over again.

"Where are you from originally?"



I began then, embarking from a hot, dry boat.

Blinking bewildered from the sausage-gut of a train.

Arriving in Rhodesia, Africa. From Derbyshire, England. I was two
years old, startled and speaking toddler English. Lungs shocked by
thick, hot, humid air. Senses crushed under the weight of so many
stimuli.

I say, "I'm African." But not black.

And I say, "I was born in England," by mistake.

But, "I have lived in Rhodesia (which is now Zimbabwe) and in Malawi
(which used to be Nyasaland) and in Zambia (which used to be Northern
Rhodesia)."

And I add, "Now I live in America," through marriage.

And (full disclosure), "But my parents were born of Scottish and
English parents."

What does that make me?

Mum doesn't know who she is, either.

She stayed up all night once listening to Scottish music and crying.

"This music"-her nose twitches-"is so beautiful. It makes me homesick."

Mum has lived in Africa all but three years of her life.

"But this is your home."

"But my heart"-Mum attempts to thump her chest-"is Scottish."

Oh, fergodsake. "You hated England," I point out.

Mum nods, her head swinging, like a chicken with a broken neck.
"You're right," she says. "But I love Scotland."

"What," I ask, challenging, "do you love about Scotland?"

"Oh the . . . the . . ." Mum frowns at me, checks to see if I'm
tricking her. "The music," she says at last, and starts to weep
again. Mum hates Scotland. She hates drunk-driving laws and the cold.
The cold makes her cry, and then she comes down with malaria.



Her eyes are half-mast. That's what my sister and I call it when Mum
is drunk and her eyelids droop. Half-mast eyes. Like the flag at the
post office whenever someone important dies, which in Zambia, with
one thing and another, is every other week. Mum stares out at the
home paddocks where the cattle are coming in for their evening water
to the trough near the stables. The sun is full and heavy over the
hills that describe the Zambia-Zaire border. "Have a drink with me,
Bobo," she offers. She tries to pat the chair next to hers, misses,
and feebly slaps the air, her arm like a broken wing.

I shake my head. Ordinarily I don't mind getting softly drunk next to
the slowly collapsing heap that is Mum, but I have to go back to
boarding school the next day, nine hours by pickup across the border
to Zimbabwe. "I need to pack, Mum."

That afternoon Mum had spent hours wrapping thirty feet of electric
wire around the trees in the garden so that she could pick up the
World Service of the BBC. The signature tune crackled over the
syrup-yellow four o'clock light just as the sun was starting to hang
above the top of the msasa trees. " 'Lillibulero,' " Mum said.
"That's Irish."

"You're not Irish," I pointed out.

She said, "Never said I was." And then, follow-on thought, "Where's
the whisky?"

We must have heard "Lillibulero" thousands of times. Maybe millions.
Before and after every news broadcast. At the top of every hour.
Spluttering with static over the garden at home; incongruous from the
branches of acacia trees in campsites we have set up in the bush
across the countryside; singing from the bathroom in the evening.

But you never know what will set Mum off. Maybe it was "Lillibulero"
coinciding with the end of the afternoon, which is a rich, sweet,
cooling, melancholy time of day.

"Your Dad was English originally," I tell her, not liking the way
this is going.

She said, "It doesn't count. Scottish blood cancels English blood."



By the time she has drunk a quarter of a bottle of whisky, we have
lost reception from Bush House in London and the radio hisses to
itself from under its fringe of bougainvillea. Mum has pulled out her
old Scottish records. There are three of them. Three records of men
in kilts playing bagpipes. The photographs show them marching blindly
(how do they see under those dead-bear hats?) down misty Scottish
cobbled streets, their faces completely blocked by their massive
instruments. Mum turns the music up as loud as it will go, takes the
whisky out to the veranda, and sits cross-legged on a picnic chair,
humming and staring out at the night-blanketed farm.

This cross-leggedness is a hangover from the brief period in Mum's
life when she took up yoga from a book. Which was better than the
brief period in her life in which she explored the possibility of
converting to the Jehovah's Witnesses. And better than the time she
bought a book on belly-dancing at a rummage sale and tried out her
techniques on every bar north of the Limpopo River and south of the
equator.

The horses shuffle restlessly in their stables. The night apes scream
from the tops of the shimmering-leafed msasa trees. The dogs set up
in a chorus of barking and will not stop until we put them inside,
all except Mum's faithful spaniel, who will not leave her side even
when she's throwing what Dad calls a wobbly. Which is what this is: a
wobbly. The radio hisses and occasionally, drunkenly, bursts into
snatches of song (Spanish or Portuguese) or chatters in German, in
Afrikaans, or in an exaggerated American accent. "This is the Voice
of America." And then it swoops, "Beee-ooooeee!"

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
Alexandra "Bobo" Fuller's journey crosses unchartered roads. This dazzlingly written memoir of a young English-born girl, whose family moves to strife-torn Rhodesia in 1972, paints a canvas of a landscape few Americans will easily recognize.

The family barely scrapes by as Rhodesia is ravaged by war, then relocates to the bleak, inhospitable landscape of Malawi and finally settles on a farm in Zambia. Along the way, these insistent white settlers encounter an environment many might question.

Three of the five Fuller children die before the age of two; only the author and her sister Vanessa survive. Their mother struggles with fierce bouts of alcoholism and breakdowns that ultimately are diagnosed as manic-depressive episodes. Meanwhile, their father fights in the Rhodesian bush for months at a time.

In the tradition of other white European women before her, such as Isak Dinesen, Bobo falls in love with an Africa she cannot be a part of and yet cannot walk away from. "My soul has no home," she movingly writes. "I am neither African, nor English nor am I of the sea."

The book may be somewhat disturbing in its politics, depending on one's viewpoint on the Rhodesian struggle, but as a writer, Fuller gives us a tour de force. We see, hear, and even smell the Africa of her childhood. Ultimately, Let's Don't Go to the Dogs Tonight becomes a 20th-century swan song to the long story of colonials in Africa; in this case, told from the inside out. And as such it makes for riveting reading. (Elena Simon)

Elena Simon lives in New York City.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"In Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller remembers her African childhood with candor and sensitivity. Though it is a diary of an unruly life in an often inhospitable place, it is suffused with Fuller's endearing ability to find laughter, even when there is little to celebrate. Fuller's debut is unsentimental and unflinching but always captivating. In wry and sometimes hilarious prose, she stares down disaster and looks back with rage and love at the life of an extraordinary family in an extraordinary time." From 1972 to 1990, Alexandra Fuller - known to friends and family as Bobo - grew up on several farms in southern and central Africa. Her father joined up on the side of the white government in the Rhodesian civil war, and was often away fighting against the powerful black guerrilla factions. Her mother, in turn, flung herself into their African life and its rugged farm work with the same passion and maniacal energy she brought to everything else. Though she loved her children, she was no hand-holder and had little tolerance for neediness. She nurtured her daughters in other ways: She taught them, by example, to be resilient and self-sufficient, to have strong wills and strong opinions, and to embrace life wholeheartedly, despite and because of difficult circumstances. And she instilled in Bobo, particularly, a love of reading and of storytelling that proved to be her salvation.

SYNOPSIS

When the ship veered into the Cape of Good Hope, Mum caught the spicy, heady scent of Africa on the changing wind. She smelled the people: raw onions and salt, the smell of people who are not afraid to eat meat, and who smoke fish over open fires on the beach and who pound maize into meal and who work out-of-doors.

FROM THE CRITICS

Stephen Clingsman - New York Times

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight is surprisingly engaging and even moving.

Publishers Weekly

A classic is born in this tender, intensely moving and even delightful journey through a white African girl's childhood. Born in England and now living in Wyoming, Fuller was conceived and bred on African soil during the Rhodesian civil war (1971-1979), a world where children over five "learn[ed] how to load an FN rifle magazine, strip and clean all the guns in the house, and ultimately, shoot-to-kill." With a unique and subtle sensitivity to racial issues, Fuller describes her parents' racism and the wartime relationships between blacks and whites through a child's watchful eyes. Curfews and war, mosquitoes, land mines, ambushes and "an abundance of leopards" are the stuff of this childhood. "Dad has to go out into the bush... and find terrorists and fight them"; Mum saves the family from an Egyptian spitting cobra; they both fight "to keep one country in Africa white-run." The "A" schools ("with the best teachers and facilities") are for white children; "B" schools serve "children who are neither black nor white"; and "C" schools are for black children. Fuller's world is marked by sudden, drastic changes: the farm is taken away for "land redistribution"; one term at school, five white students are "left in the boarding house... among two hundred African students"; three of her four siblings die in infancy; the family constantly sets up house in hostile, desolate environments as they move from Rhodesia to Zambia to Malawi and back to Zambia. But Fuller's remarkable affection for her parents (who are racists) and her homeland (brutal under white and black rule) shines through. This affection, in spite of its subjects' prominent flaws, reveals their humanity and allows the reader directentry into her world. Fuller's book has the promise of being widely read and remaining of interest for years to come. Photos not seen by PW. (On-sale Dec. 18) Forecast: Like Anne Frank's diary, this work captures the tone of a very young person caught up in her own small world as she witnesses a far larger historical event. It will appeal to those looking for a good story as well as anyone seeking firsthand reportage of white southern Africa. The quirky title and jacket will propel curious shoppers to pick it up. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

KLIATT

To quote KLIATT's March 2003 review of the Recorded Books audiobook edition: Alexandra (Bobo) was born in England but moved to what was then Rhodesia in the early 1970s when she was about three years old. As that child, she recounts the wars, the fighting, the racism, and her family's struggles with the climate, the land, and the people. They are farmers and everything is difficult. Bobo's view of it all is fresh, matter-of-fact and often na￯﾿ﾽve, as she describes driving through land mine-ridden country, her mother going down the driveway to greet visitors with her Uzi slung over her shoulder, her father leaving for his stint of soldiering in the bush, or the children learning how to take apart and put together the family guns and learn CPR and first aid, "in case all the grown-ups are dead." Pathos, humor, and the details of what life in Rhodesia was like make this a remarkable, startling experience. (Editor's note: the paperback edition includes a Reader's Guide, with a statement from the author, suggested reading, and questions for discussion.) KLIATT Codes: SA￯﾿ﾽRecommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2001, Random House, 316p. illus. map. bibliog., Purucker

Library Journal

It is difficult for most people even to imagine the world described in this book, let alone live in it as a child: the nights are dark, scary, and filled with strange noises; the people welcome you and despise you at the same time; there is a constant anxious feeling burning in your stomach, which, you later realize, is fear of the unrest surrounding you. The British-born Fuller grew up in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), losing three siblings to disease as her father fought in the Rhodesian civil war and her mother managed the farm. She approaches her childhood with reserve, leaving many stories open to interpretation while also maintaining a remarkable clarity about what really transpired in her homeland, in her own home, and in her head. The narrative seems complicated, weaving together war, politics, racial issues, and alcoholism, but its emotional core remains honest, playful, and unapologetic; it hardly seems possible that this 32-year-old has so much to say and says it so well. In this powerful debut, Fuller fully succeeds in memorializing the beauty of each desert puddle and each African summer night sky while also recognizing that beauty can lie hidden in the faces of those who have crossed her path. Highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/1/01.]-Rachel Collins, "Library Journal" Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

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