When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa

As the second generation child of a prominent white Zimbabwean family and a highly respected international journalist, Peter Godwin does a marvelous job of intertwining the inevitable, tragic disintegration of a formerly prosperous country with the all too real consequences for a white family caught in the throes of horrendous social, political, and economic change. To read this book is to finally understand what it's like to have one's culture pulled from beneath one's very being...and what it's like to adjust to a terrible world where race means the difference between life and death.

This beautifully written story will remain in your heart and mind. It will be one of the more memorable books I have read.

Author Peter Goodwin grew up in Zimbabwe when it was Rhodesia. He returns to help his aging parents and finds a country that is collapsing under the brutal dictator, Robert Mugabe. Eloquently he describes the downward spiral of a once beautiful, thriving country.

Peter Godwin's book is a must read for anyone visiting southern africa or just interested in african politics. It helped me understand how a targeted minority,dispite horrific risks, would refuse to leave their homeland. Truely an amazing and tragic Zimbabwean story written from his personal experience.
Roger

An engrossing, extremely well written,emotional history and saga of a country and a family who lived and loved Rhodesia and then Zimbabawe. This is like a docu-drama only its true.. Goodwin gives us a great history lesson as well as the personal story of his family and a political statement.. there is always news about the poverty in Zimbabwe but the reasons for this are obvious after reading A Crocodile eats the sun... Another violent crazy dictator..Mugabe..