When a Crocodile Eats the Sun

In the past couple of weeks, I've read a lot in the news about Zimbabwe -- the cholera epidemic, continued political turmoil, and the near collapse of the social and economic fabric that has been getting progressively worse since 1980 when Robert Mugabe took power. What led me to stop and read the news stories about Zimbabwe was a book I just finished, When a Crocodile Eats the Sun by Peter Godwin, a journalist and author who was born in Zimbabwe and now lives in New York. This memoir covers a period between 1996 and 2004, when Godwin returns many times to Africa after his father has a heart attack up until the time he delivers his father's body to a funeral pyre. The country is coming apart at the seams as Mugabe's followers begin throwing white farmers off of their land in a massive land take-over that ultimately precipitated the extreme poverty and starvation currently gripping the country. That's the backdrop for the stories of Godwin's family, which he tells with a lot of love. As his father is recovering from the heart attack, Peter comes across a photograph of a woman and young girl, and learns from his mother that the woman is Peter's grandmother and the girl, his aunt, who perished at Treblinka. It is only then that Peter learns that his father is Jewish, born Kazimierz Jerzy Goldfarb in Poland, rather than George Godwin born in Britain. Thus, the displacement of white Zimbabweans takes on new meaning for the Godwins.

For [Kazimierz}, Africa is clearly the antidote to Europe's great burden of history, the blood feuds and the destruction, the prejudices and the pogroms and the Holocaust. It is a place where he can wipe his memory of past hurt and start again.

But, of course, some 60 years later George and Peter both find themselves repeating history.

Godwin is not only a great writer, but he really knows his stuff and delivers what seems to be an inside look at Zimbabwean culture. Here's one short passage:

A sultry black waitress named Temptation talks us through the menu: smoked crocodile, tiger fish mousse, roast mopani worms, ostrich terrine, impala stew, warthog steak. While we eat, a woman offers to braid my hair with extensions, and a man in a loincloth declares he is PingePinge,a witch doctor, and would like to tell my fortune.

Godwin observes not only his father's failing health and both of his parent's desperate attempts to salvage their lives in Zimbabwe, but also his own personal loss of home.

I can't bear the guilt, the feeling of responsibility. I can't lug the skins of my forebears on my back wherever I go. I will be just like my father. I will dispel from my head all the arcane details of this place, the language, the history, the memory. I will turn my back on the land that made me. Like Poland was to him, Africa is for me: a place in which I can never truly belong, a dangerous place that will, if I allow it to, reach into my life.

This is a really good book told by a remarkable man, who despite his many accomplishments maintains his humility and keeps his eyes open as he observes the world around him.

I think I've been reading too many books about the dark places in the world and the dark times in history. But I can't stop myself. I find these stories too compelling and important to resist. Maybe a brief respite into something lighter... oh no, that will have to wait because I've already started my next book about the siege of Sarajevo. More to come...

A Brilliant Sea of Poppies

When I finished reading Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh, I went to his website to read a little more about him, and I was delighted to learn that this is the first book in a trilogy. While it’s hard to imagine a book better than this one, Ghosh has such a fertile imagination and writes so beautifully that I’m certain he can pull it off. And what a fascinating group of characters he has created; a schooner called the Ibis being the central character around which the epic story revolves. The setting is India during the 19th century, with Britain and China gearing up to fight the opium wars. On a voyage from Calcutta to Mauritius, the stories of people from all walks of life and diverse cultures intertwine, revealing the best and worst in people, with humanity winning out.

This is another book that is rife with hard-to-understand language. Take this passage:

’Malum must be propa pukka sahib,’ said the serang. ‘All lascar wanchi Malum be captin-bugger by’m’by.’

Interestingly, the novel is followed by a something called The Ibis Chrestomathy, which serves as sort of a glossary, and is supposedly written by one of the main characters some years after the events unfold because of his obsession with language. Reading this book on my Kindle, where I couldn’t easily flip to the back of the book, I didn’t know of the existence of the Chrestomathy until I finished the book. And although the Kindle has a search function so I could search for a word, all uses of the word are flagged, making it essentially useless to look up the meaning of a word. In any case, over time I got used to the language and could almost understand it, and I loved the authenticity of the many languages spoken by this rag-tag group of people on the ship.

Beyond his masterful use of dialogue, Ghosh writes amazing, deeply intimate prose, such as this:

Then his own face began to smart and he realized that his eyes had welled up with a substance that was as corrosive as acid, tinged with the bitter gall of his betrayals of his wife and child, and with the bile that came from knowing that he had spent all his years as a somnambulist, walking through his days as if his life mattered no more than a bit-part in a play written by someone else.

There is a lot to love about this book. In fact, I intend to read it again because I'm sure I have merely scratched the surface with the first read.

Becoming a locavore... or not

I almost always read books to completion, even when I don’t especially care for them. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle compelled me to break this rule. Even though I have really enjoyed all of Barbara Kingsolver’s novels, and I am a strong proponent of the ideas she espouses in AVM, after a few hundred pages I simply got tired of being harangued by her constant lectures and self-important ruminations. I love the way she writes, but wish she would stick to novels; also her writing gifts do not extend to her daughter and husband, who somewhat annoyingly co-authored the book. Kingsolver and her family committed themselves for one year to eating locally and writing about the experience. Everything they ate (with a very few exceptions) was grown or raised by them, or bought from local farmers. Living on a farm in Virginia made it possible, but it still wasn’t easy.

Imagine doing it yourself. First of all, no bananas, no coffee. Where I live, no oranges. And you have to eat seasonally, something that I think is a great idea but also difficult. I love things like winter squash, kale, and other winter greens, but no salads all winter long would be almost unbearable. Garrett and I do a pretty good job of buying almost all of our meat locally from farms that raise their animals humanely and sustainably; and we pick and freeze or can fruits and vegetables all summer long. And I love to go the farmer’s markets and buy really fresh fruits and veggies, and artisanal cheeses from local farmers. But that’s about as far as I want to go.