A MEMOIR

A prev owner’s name has been covered by a blank “Ex Libris”. 342pp; 8pp b&w photos.

When a Crocodile Eats the Sun is a story of the disintegration of a family, set against the collapse of a country. Peter Godwin is living in Manhattan when he returns to Zimbabwe, his birthplace, having received the news that his father is dying. He finds the former breadbasket of a continent entering a vortex of violent chaos and famine, prey to goon squads, presided over by a paranoid kleptocracy. But his parents, who emigrated from England after the Second World War, refuse to leave their home. It is against this backdrop that Godwin discovers a fifty year old family secret, one which changes everything he thought he knew about his place in the world.

When a Crocodile East the Sun  is how the Shona people of Zimbabwe describe a solar eclipse, the celestial crocodile, they say briefly consumes the life giving star as a warning that his is much displeased with man below, the very worst of omens. Peter Godwin’s powerful, moving memoir describes dark times amid dark aspects of human behaviour spanning two continents and half a century, it is a searing portrayal of of a son’s effort to rescue his family and a family’s struggle to belong in a hostile land.