ALEXANDRA FULLER

                Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, Picador,  London, 2002

Another page about the same author in this site, here

March 14, 2002, 11:06PM

A little girl's white Africa

By BRIAN HOWARD

DON'T LET'S GO
TO THE DOGS TONIGHT:
An African Childhood.
By Alexandra Fuller.
Random House, $24.95.

ON Page 145, halfway through her vivid memoir of "An African Childhood," Alexandra Fuller encounters her first black African granted the dignity of a full name, a rich kid whom liberation has brought to desegregate her school. On Page 235, by now almost 14 years old, she is asked, for the first time, into the home of a black African. If it's Africa that Fuller loves, and re-creates for us with palpable intensity, it's an Africa where black Africans are incidental at best. More often they are feared and fought, belittled, blamed, called ugly names and occasionally pitied. This Africa, a place of soul-bending beauty and hardship, she evokes in compelling detail and with "unapologetic" honesty, as her enthusiastic reviewers point out. If her readers are willing to enter a world of self-centered, booze-crazed white racists presented without apology or serious reflection, she'll lead them on a remarkable journey.

Fuller reconstructs her childhood -- her survival -- as the younger daughter of British expatriates who try to dodge war, drought, land redistribution and bad luck by scuttling from farm to farm in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia in the 1970s and '80s.

Tim and Nicola Fuller are not wealthy landowners or diplomats but hardscrabble tobacco and cattle farmers, although hardscrabble here still comes with a cook, a gardener, a watchman, a driver and all you can possibly drink. They are beloved, at times exuberant, often dangerously unstable parents. They are soldiers for white supremacy; it's why they moved from Kenya to Rhodesia.

"We were prepared to take our baby into a war to live in a country where white men still ruled," Mum tells a visitor more than once.

During Rhodesia's war of liberation from white-minority rule, they join the police reservists, and Dad goes out at night to hunt black "terrorists," who are known (but never shown) to "chop off the ears and lips and eyelids of little white children." Like all white kids older than 5, Alexandra (called Bobo) and big sister Vanessa are taught how to strip, clean, load and shoot guns to kill. For her off-to-school photo, 8-year-old Bobo gets to hold the "oozie." When the Fullers go to the store, it's in a mine-proofed Land Rover, in a convoy protected by soldiers.

In the comfort of their home they're surrounded by barbed wire, thorn hedges and packs of dogs, with loaded guns at bedside. "We cheer when we hear the faint, stomach-echoing thump of a mine detonating," Bobo says. "Either an African or a baboon has been wounded or killed."

They'll kill to keep from sharing land and power, but there's one thing they can't avoid sharing with black Africans: the pain of dead children. The Fullers lose a son to meningitis, a daughter to drowning and a third, never-seen child whose death alcoholic Mum blames (but never explains) like this: "That's what happens when you have a baby in a free African country. A government hospital. ... "

Is it too much to expect the sensitive, keenly observant daughter of such a family not to step too lightly over the small black bodies filling the earth around her? We spend far more time with sick dogs and an injured owl.

Bobo isn't blind to the casual brutality of white privilege. Maybe empathy and introspection wither in the face of arbitrary men and nature, the need simply to keep going. Still, there's an angle from which a stiff upper lip -- whether applied to a loved one's mental illness or a stranger's anguish -- starts to look like cowardice.

As Mum spirals into alcohol and her eventually diagnosed manic depression, shadow-boxing with the postcolonial madness swirling around her, one of the book's most terrible scenes shows her on horseback charging at men, women and children squatting on her land, screaming racist obscenities while Bobo watches.

The Fullers are not nice people, despite quirks their daughter must mean to charm us. They don't much care for anyone but Fullers, not even "expats-like-us" -- certainly not foreign missionaries, mercenaries or, worst of all, aid workers.

This scene with "a nice Englishman" who's come to show Africans how to run a business is less poisonous than some:

Mum says, "If we could have kept one country white-ruled it would be an oasis, a refuge. I mean, look what a cock-up. Everywhere you look it's a bloody cock-up."

The guest says nothing, but his smile is bemused. I can tell he's thinking, Oh my God, they'll never believe this when I tell them back home. He's saving this conversation for later. He's a two-year wonder. People like this never last beyond two malaria seasons, at most. Then he'll go back to England and say, "When I was in Zambia ... " for the rest of his life.

Rarely Fuller sinks to a little self-indulgent African mysticism, about the restless souls of children in unmarked graves, her soul that "has no home," the bad luck of touching the things of dead people. Soon it's on to tales, reported with wit and sharp style to match Bobo's toughness: Mum emptying an "oozie" clip into the pantry to kill a cobra, encounters with menacing but easily bribed soldiers, drunken Christmas revels with an exploding brandy cake, Bobo near death in the bush from drinking bad water, loving this place: "I make a vow never to leave Africa."

But she does, for college and then to marry an American. Now 32, she lives in Wyoming. On visits home,

when I step off the plane in Lusaka and that sweet, raw-onion, wood-smoke, acrid smell of Africa rushes into my face I want to weep for joy. ... The incongruous, lawless, joyful, violent, upside-down, illogical certainty of Africa comes at me like a rolling rainstorm, until I am drenched with relief.

None of this is strictly a story told by a child. If we accept and value it as what the girl saw, we will wait expectantly to hear what the woman thinks.

Brian Howard lives in Houston.

23-12-2001

The grass is singing

Out of a beautiful and troubled Africa, Alexandra Fuller has crafted an understated yet gripping memoir of childhood

By Gail Caldwell, 12/23/2001

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood
By Alexandra Fuller
Random House, 301 pp., $24.95

The literature of sub-Saharan Africa is generally better without any symphonic overture. Its story is treacherous and gorgeous enough sans embellishment, whether one visits its past or present, its rain forests or cities or savannahs. Hemingway sensed this - that epics require simplicity - as did, to a lesser degree, Isak Dinesen and Beryl Markham, both of whom molded ineradicably the way Westerners think of the bush. When Markham, in "West With the Night," describes the prospect of war as "a laborious method of retribution," the phrase suggests some of the outlandish surrealism that hovers over the continent - a place far bigger in spirit and dark possibility than any one narrative can hint.

Alexandra Fuller, who was born in England in 1969 but whose family moved to Africa when she was 2, seems to realize the inherent grandiosity of her subject, for her delivery in "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight" is as casually unadorned as rawhide, and just about as tough. It's plenty dramatic, one supposes, to have rats "the size of a small cat" running over a young girl's feet at night; plenty uproarious to have a mum who uses hypodermic needles to spike an English Christmas pudding, until the thing explodes all over the guests. And plenty extraordinary, one might add, to spend a childhood growing up in white Rhodesia - with a father who fights against independence in the civil war, a mother who volleys wildly between brilliant charm and too much drink, and three siblings buried across the continent like tiny lost diamonds. Or, in Fuller's bulletproof, full-sentence description: "Five born, three dead."

The family memoir that most comes to mind when reading "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight" is Michael Ondaatje's searingly unemotional depiction of a wild childhood in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon), "Running in the Family." The same muggy insanity enshrouds the text of Fuller's story, the same armchair intensity of political strife, family madness, and garish background material. Fuller's loving but skeptical narrative distance is established from the outset, when she watches her mother - rendered here as an astonishing character - take a kind Englishman hostage, ply him with alcohol, and force him to listen to the all-night tragedy of Being Nicola Fuller. Fuller the younger, having heard it a hundred times before, goes to sleep. The dog next to her is already snoring, accompanied by the lamentations of her mother. "We were prepared to die, you see," she tells the Englishman, "to keep one country white-run."

The rare story that subsequently unfolds is so grippingly real and matter-of-fact that one has an intimate regard for Fuller's interior experience - what it must have felt like to have this childhood - even without her elaborating on that psychic dimension. Instead we are delivered the taste of fried impala, the horrifying thrill of finding a cobra in the pantry, the ordinary anguishes and pleasures of this extraordinary life: scorpions and dehydration and visiting missionaries, each of them posing a sort of absurdist threat to be acknowledged, then overcome. The Fullers belonged to that motley crew of white "expats," as Nicola called them, who fought for Rhodesia in the civil war, small-time eccentrics who moved from farm to farm finding a workable life - one that included a few servants, a lot of dogs, days of horseback riding and tending crops or drinking and waiting for rain. Nicola spends days training the horses not to spook at gunfire; properly outfitted with her Uzi and her flask of brandy, she rides shotgun in the family Land Rover when they drive through rough territory. To her daughters, she is eminently cheerful about being under fire: "Be ready to put your heads down, girls."

And then, in 1980, Rhodesia officially becomes Zimbabwe, and Robert Mugabe is elected prime minister. The Afrikaaners are the first to collect their children from Fuller's boarding school; by the end of term, she is one of five white students among hundreds of native Africans. She is afraid to bathe with black students. In you go, says the kind black matron, who seems inured to such fears. "Nothing happens," Fuller reports. "I do not turn black."

The extremely personal and unguarded understatement of this memoir is far more powerful than any sociopolitical analysis or apologist interpretation could hope to be. One rarely gets such an unsentimental or unadorned account of growing up racist - of how very ordinary it might be, within the innocent sphere of childhood, to play a game of "boss and boys," or to worry that shared bathwater will carry the contagion of color. When she is 13, Fuller has her first meal as the guest of a black African family; that night, she returns to their hut, and tries to give them half the clothes in her closet.

And yet this is a subtheme to "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight," an atmospheric truth that covers everything but can't really be understood head-on or up-close. What is more immediate about Fuller's memories is the story of her mum - a woman who suffered her share of grief and nervousbreakdowns, as Vanessa called them, who could make her own daughter ride all day without water, then spend a week trying to save an injured owl. Like the formidable parent-characters of other memoirs - Geoffrey Wolff's "The Duke of Deception," say, or Mary Karr's "The Liars' Club" - Nicola Fuller qualifies for the rogue's gallery of unforgettable antagonists. "All of us are mad," she says gamely near the end of Fuller's story, after a particularly bad fall. "But I'm the only one with a certificate to prove it."

Following the erratic path of African politics (and their own hearts) from farm to farm, the Fullers eventually land in Zambia, a country recovering from "belly-rocking, land-sucking drought." And Vanessa and Alexandra - Van and Bobo, to their parents - leave for university and adulthood: for the greater world of education, their own children, cultural and personal ambiguity. As is so often the case with the expatriate experience, the fierce longing and joy Fuller felt for her family and for Africa didn't diminish with time or distance. The story within "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight" is all the more remarkable for the complexity it contains, rendered here, like Fuller's Africa, with startling, laconic passion.

Gail Caldwell is the chief book critic of the Globe.

Books | Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood
By Alexandra Fuller
(Random House, 368 pages, $24.95)

Reviewed by Cynthia R. Greenlee

In a word-association game, the word "Africa" would rarely dredge up this word: "white." But the international media's headlines, most recently those about white farmers resisting land reform in Zimbabwe, force us to take a closer look and acknowledge that there are whites who can lay claim to an African identity — and certainly more knowledge and experience of the continent than many black Americans.

Alexandra Fuller, author of the clear-eyed new memoir Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood, is one of them. The daughter of two British expats, Fuller lived most of her childhood in southern and central Africa. Only two years old when her family left England for Africa, Fuller came alive with her emigration and came to treasure as home a landscape that was far removed from her family's British roots.

Early in the memoir, Fuller, called "Bobo" by her family, explains her unique identity. "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 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."

Fuller's childhood was one of upheaval. While she was growing up, black Rhodesians rose up against the white-minority government led by Ian Smith. Bobo's all-white school integrated. Disputes over land and lack of economic opportunities pushed the Fullers from place to place.

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight tells of a family impacted by outside forces, as the father goes to war to preserve the colonial regime. But it's also rent from the inside. At least 75 percent of Bobo's mother's appearances in the book show her in a drunken or half-crazed stupor — both before and after the tragic deaths of three children. She's later diagnosed with a mental disorder.

Fuller doesn't paint a rosy picture of her mother or of the settler society in which she lived. Rhodesia, like South Africa, was a country where racism was both official governmental philosophy and overarching social pathology.

That pathology is summed up in the sections quoting Fuller's mother. One such bit, titled "Tragedies of Our Lives," relates an inevitable part of her mother's alcohol-soaked repertoire. The great tragedy, her mother says in 1999, is that "we fought to keep one country in Africa white-run ... just one country. We lost twice [she refers to Kenya and Zimbabwe]. ... If we could have kept one country white-ruled, it would be an oasis, a refuge."

The real tragedy, of course, is that as little as three years ago, Fuller's mother would still be pining for the good old days, which were so very bad for the majority of people. It's an irony of which Fuller is well aware. The Africa that her parents loved is not a continent, but an enclave. They spoke the local languages and tilled the land using traditional methods, but they refused to see Africa outside of the colonial context.

And this is the lasting value of Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight. It reminds us that Zimbabwe's liberation from white-minority rule was not so far away.

Fuller writes in such matter-of-fact fashion about racism and family dysfunction that she instantly seems an authority. For a child of Rhodesia, she is remarkably even-handed when dealing with the history of black resistance there. This is no nostalgic, patronizing story, and the book will never be made into a movie like I Dreamed of Africa.

Ironically, the one character we get to know the least in this family memoir is Fuller herself. Though her grief and guilt over the deaths of her siblings — the family's central emotional drama — are evident, we don't get enough of Fuller's personal reactions about Rhodesia's transition to a new name, majority rule and a new world order across Africa.

Fuller comes close to expressing her perspective in only a few accounts: one, where her pregnant mother charges on horseback at black squatters after the Fuller home has been seized as part of a land distribution plan of the post-independence government; and another, when Fuller accidentally runs down a child in Malawi, is invited into the home, and eats a dinner that constitutes the entire family's meal.

The latter incident is, according to Fuller, the first time she was ever formally invited into a black African family's home. She was 14. Only then did she begin to really see the Africans, who had been rendered invisible to her and others in her expat colonial culture.

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight is a courageous memoir about complicated times and an equally complicated family. You may not want to know them, may even despise them at times, but you never doubt that they're real.

First published: February 18, 2002

Sunday 15 September, 2002

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood

Book review

GIVEN all the international chatter about the situation with white farmers in Zimbabwe, a long-time academic associate of ours alerted us to the book, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood, by Alexandra Fuller.

This is a personal account of a young white girl who grew up in Rhodesia. Her family fled black rule in Kenya, went to Rhodesia and then on to Malawi and Zambia. The book is quite frank in its unvarnished portrayal of the white settler mentality.

Mum and Dad are hard drinking Britons who refer to Africans as “baboons” and are given to explaining proudly to strangers, “at least we fought to keep one country under white rule.” Dad served in some Rhodesian volunteer outfit, Mum in the police auxiliary – both determined to kill “terrs” or terrorists, to wit blacks.

This book has received some publicity over the past few months as it is an unflattering and unvarnished account of a racist drunken dysfunctional family. Certainly this is not an accurate account of all settler families - but unfortunately a good many would fall into this category. The book seems quite timely, so we went to it to obtain some reviews for your pleasure. 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. 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.

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 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 Book Description 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. She held me up to face the earthy air, so that the fingers of warmth pushed back my black curls of hair, and her pale green eyes went clear-glassy.

“Smell that,” she whispered, “that’s home.” sa was running up and down the deck, unaccountably wild for a child usually so placid. Intoxicated already.

I took in a faceful of African air and fell instantly into a fever.

In Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller remembers her African childhood with visceral authenticity. 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 guerilla factions. Her mother, in turn, flung herself at 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.

A worthy heir to Isak Dinesen and Beryl Markham, Alexandra Fuller writes poignantly about a girl becoming a woman and a writer against a backdrop of unrest, not just in her country but in her home. But Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight is more than a survivor’s story. It is the story of one woman’s unbreakable bond with a continent and the people who inhabit it, a portrait lovingly realized and deeply felt.

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood
by Alexandra Fuller

August 28, 2002

Given all the international chatter about the situation with white farmers in Zimbabwe, a long-time academic associate of ours alerted us to the book, Don't let's go to the dogs tonight: an African childhood, by Alexandra Fuller.

This is a personal account of a young white girl who grew up in Rhodesia. Her family fled black rule in Kenya, went to Rhodesia and then on to Malawi and Zambia. The book is quite frank in its unvarnished portrayal of the white settler mentality.

Mum and Dad are hard drinking Britons who refer to Africans as "baboons" and are given to explaining proudly to strangers, "at least we fought to keep one country under white rule."

Dad served in some Rhodesian volunteer outfit, Mum in the police auxiliary - both determined to kill "terrs" or terrorists, to wit blacks.

This book has received some publicity over the past few months as it is an unflattering and unvarnished account of a racist drunken dysfunctional family. Certainly this is not an accurate account of all settler families - but unfortunately a good many would fall into this category. The book seems quite timely.

Your dot com for Africa has a business association with Amazon.com and so we went to it to obtain some reviews for your pleasure.

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. 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.

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

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"

Book Description

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. She held me up to face the earthy air, so that the fingers of warmth pushed back my black curls of hair, and her pale green eyes went clear-glassy.

“Smell that,” she whispered, “that’s home.”

Vanessa was running up and down the deck, unaccountably wild for a child usually so placid. Intoxicated already.

I took in a faceful of African air and fell instantly into a fever.
In Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller remembers her African childhood with visceral authenticity. 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 guerilla factions. Her mother, in turn, flung herself at 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.

A worthy heir to Isak Dinesen and Beryl Markham, Alexandra Fuller writes poignantly about a girl becoming a woman and a writer against a backdrop of unrest, not just in her country but in her home. But Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight is more than a survivor’s story. It is the story of one woman’s unbreakable bond with a continent and the people who inhabit it, a portrait lovingly realized and deeply felt.

 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.

Don't let's go to the dogs tonight: An African childhood

Reviewed by Nicola Walker
April 27 2002

DON'T LET'S GO TO THE DOGS TONIGHT: An African Childhood
By Alexandra Fuller
Picador, 310pp, $30

Kaffirs, muntus, toeys, wogs and uppity blacks: these are some of the terms Alexandra Fuller and her family used for Africans. And it is characteristic of the candour of this gripping memoir that Fuller makes no bones, or apologies, about these now unacceptable epithets; nor does she shy away from revealing just how deep-rooted such attitudes were, and still are.

Early on in Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, Fuller's drunken, spirited mother is telling an Englishman who has come to Zambia to help local businessmen - this is in 1999 - that: "We fought to keep one country in Africa white-run ... If we could have kept one country white-ruled it would be an oasis, a refuge."

But even white rule would not have prevented the deaths of three of her infant children, losses which cause her eventual nervous breakdown and reliance on the bottle, as well as many hilarious episodes. Undoubtedly, Fuller has been blessed with excellent material, her triumph is in the way she has skilfully reshaped it: in its clear-eyed unsentimentality and humour, and with a canine echo to boot, this is the literary equal of Lasse Hallstrom's classic film My Life as a Dog.

Fuller's impecunious parents are profoundly, eccentrically British, even if her mother was born in Kenya, and were as much hostages to fortune as their native workers, whom they treated fairly but with a certain imperial reserve. They farmed dairy cows and tobacco in Rhodesia, Malawi and Zambia, often living hand-to-mouth, hocking jewellery when they needed cash. Life in 1970s war-torn Rhodesia, on a farm overlooking the Mozambique border, was precarious, largely made tenable by the Fullers' intense love for their adopted region and an intrinsic belief in the justness of their fight to keep Ian Smith in government. They are sometimes callous towards the locals, but incongruously affectionate to their pack of flea-ridden dogs; they work hard, are bold, stubborn, patient and committed; they still live in Africa.

As a youngster, Fuller exasperated her black nannies, bossed the kitchen "boy", ordered the piccaninnies to play with her and strode around her bush world with all the confidence of a miniature bwana. She was probably no different from any of her contemporaries, but here she turns the experience on its head, exposing with a light and subtle touch some of her most absurd youthful assumptions.

On April 18, 1980, the day Robert Mugabe won power and the country was renamed Zimbabwe, she watched, wide-eyed with disbelief, as her all-white school became multi-racial. Oliver Chiweshe, the first black child to arrive, speaks perfect English, does not "cement mix" his food when he eats, is impeccably dressed and has wealthy middle-class parents. Soon, Fuller is one of only five white boarders left, and must one day share the bath water of two Shona girls; to her surprise, she does "not break out in spots or a rash ... [does] not turn black".

Mugabe begins then the task of redistributing land, which he has so notoriously been completing in recent months, and the Fullers lose their farm. Undaunted, they pack up and move to Malawi to begin afresh. On their new farm, the 13-year-old Fuller is invited into an African labourer's hut for the first time, and both her embarrassed horror at being handed a bowl of oily fish stew and her host's poverty, kindness and dignity are brought bewitchingly to life, with a vivid immediacy that illuminates the entire book.

Nicola Walker, born in Malawi, is a London-based critic.

LESEBUCH 

Die ebenso anrührende wie fesselnde Geschichte einer Kindheit - und eine meisterhafte literarische Hommage an Afrika.

Titel: Unter afrikanischer Sonne
Meine Kindheit in Simbabwe
Autorin: Alexandra Fuller
Deutsch von Sabine Roth
Umfang: 317 Seiten, geb., Schutzumschlag
Verlag: Goldmann, München
Preis: 21,90 €, ISBN 3-442-30973-5

Alexandra Fuller: Unter afrikanischer Sonne

Alexandra Fuller ist zwei Jahre alt, als ihre Eltern zu Beginn der Siebzigerjahre beschließen, ihrer Heimat England den Rücken zu kehren und nach Rhodesien - in das heutige Simbabwe - auszuwandern.

Es ist ein hartes Leben voller Entbehrungen, das die Fullers erwartet, doch allen Widrigkeiten zum Trotz empfindet Alexandra schon früh eine fast schmerzhaft intensive Verbundenheit zu diesem faszinierenden Land voller exotischer Schönheit: Der Duft von schwarzem Tee und jungem Gras, das Rascheln der Tabakblätter im Wind, die flirrende Hitze und der Staub auf der Haut erfüllen sie mit einem Gefühl von Geborgenheit und Glück. Und selbst wenn sie schon in jungen Jahren lernen muss, was Bürgerkrieg und Flucht bedeuten, so ist Alexandra doch zutiefst verwurzelt mit dem Schwarzen Kontinent, der ihr zur über alles geliebten - zur einzigen Heimat wird.

SWEDEN

Alexandra Fuller — “Mitt förflutna landskap — En afrikansk barndom”

Hon är i dag i trettioårsåldern när hon skriver om sina minnen från sitt älskade, vita Ian Smiths Rhodesia. Alexandra Fuller beskriver sin barndom som vit flicka i en familj där flera av hennes syskon dött under olika omständigheter. Robert Mugabe tog makten i ett val under slutet på 70-talet efter befrielsekriget.

Boken skall nästan ses som relief till Mugabes vanstyre idag. Alexandras familj reste runt efter deras farm försvann ur deras ägo, man kan säga att gamla patriarkarla strukturer styrde gamla kolonilandet.

Alexandra ser med ett oskyldigt barns ögon på både katastrofer och mindre lyckliga tilldragelser precis som att nästan att läsa en Astrid Lindgrenberättelse. Fast här regerar verklighetens alltmera påträngande förändring av det svarta Afrika.

En mycket stark debutbok.

DANEMARK

(23/7 2002)

Afrikas lyse stemme

Skrevet af Karen Seneca

Lad os ikke gå i hundene i aften

Jeg vil til Afrika! Jeg vil til Afrika for at indsnuse alle de dufte, se farverne og folket, som Alexandra Fulller beskriver i sin bog 'Lad os ikke gå i hundene i aften'.

Får smilet frem
Bogen giver et billede af Afrika set fra Alexandra Fullers øjne.
En (hvid) pige, der vokser op i det ene afrikanske land efter det andet, lærer at skyde som ganske ung 'hvis de sorte oprørere kommer' og som klarer sig på trods af forældrenes druk og galskab.
Det kan lyde lige lovligt socialrealistisk, men vær ikke bange: Denne her bog er skrevet på en usentimental og humoristisk måde, som får mundvigene til at pege opad, når man læser den.

Cola til morgenmad
Det er ikke småting, Alexandra Fuller, oplever i løbet af sin opvækst.
Hendes forældre er hvide farmere, som drikker støt gennem bogen 320 sider, alligevel bestyrer de den ene plantage efter den anden.
De har aldrig penge, når de har, bruger de dem med det samme. Ord som rigtig ernæring indgår ikke i deres tankegang. Tværtimod må ungerne tit klare sig selv og indtage det, der nu engang er i huset.
Dåsecola og kiks for eksempel.

Familien kæmper for at bevare de hvides overmagt i Afrika - det er deres land. Synes de. I hvert fald er de bedst til at bestemme. Basta. Også brønene vokser op med troen på, at hvide mennesker har ret til kommendere med sorte.
Alt det fortæller Alexandra Fuller uden undskyldninger, men med en selvironisk distance til den overlegenhed, hun også selv følte.
Sådan var hun opdraget - sådan 'var det bare'.

De tre døde børn
I det hele taget er portrættet af familien lige så spændende at læse om, som det er at læse selve kontinentet.
Moderen bliver mere og mere sindsyg, faderen drager tit afsted i ugevis - enten for at jage eller for at kæmpe mod de sorte oprørere og tragedien hænger over deres hoveder som en stank, der aldrig forsvinder.
Tragedien er tabet af tre børn ialt. Noget, der kan få de fleste forældre til at gå i hundene, hvilke moderen da også gør.

Afrika forever
På trods af druk, på trods af sorg, af borgerkrige og sygdomme, så kæmper forældrene på deres måde.
De elsker at være i Afrika, de lader sig ikke slå ud, de er nærmest selvmorderiske i deres beslutsomhed.
Og Alexandra Fuller selv? Jo, hun bor i dag i USA og længes efter sit Afrika, som hun stadig besøger.

FINLAND

Ei hunningolle tänään : afrikkalainen lapsuuteni /

Alexandra Fuller ; suomentanut Sirpa Kähkönen. -

ITALIA 

Nella terra dei leopardi: storia di una bambina bianca nell'Africa nera / Alexandra Fuller. - Rizzoli, 2002. - 317 p.

 FRANCE

Alexandra Fuller. Larmes de pierre. Une enfance africaine. Traduit de l’anglais par Anne Rabinovitch. Calmann-Lévy, 334 pages

Radio France

Alexandra FULLER est née en Angleterre en 1969. En 1972, elle s'installe avec sa famille dans une ferme en Rhodésie. En 1981, les Fuller quittent le pays pour le Malawi, puis la Zambie. Depuis 1994, Alexandra FULLER vit aux Etats Unis avec son mari et ses deux enfants. Dans "Larmes de Pierre - une enfance africaine", qui paraît chez CALMANN-LEVY, elle fait le récit de son enfance en Afrique, placée sous le signe d'une double tragédie : tragédie familiale, avec l'alcoolisme d'une mère brisée par la mort de trois enfants, le racisme du père et la souffrance muette d'une soeur traumatisée par un viol ; tragédie politique, celle d'une Afrique australe déchirée par les guerres. Les parents d'Alexandra, des fermiers blancs endettés, soutiennent la politique coloniale ségrégationniste. Après avoir combattu contre l'indépendance, ils sont chassés de leurs terres lorsque la majorité noire accède au pouvoir au Zimbabwe. Au rythme de déménagements successifs, au Malawi puis en Zambie, Alexandra prendra conscience de la beauté et de la misère d'une Afrique qui tente en vain de maîtriser son destin.
A la fois chronique familiale et témoignage historique, "Larmes de pierre" restitue avec sensibilité et humour la magie particulière d'une Afrique violente et magnifique, dont l'auteur a su capturer les couleurs, les odeurs et les sons.