When A Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa is an exceptionally well-written book of Africa telling three stories simultaneously ... a universal, heartwarming story of caring for aging parents, the stark tragedy of the rendering of Zimbabwe / Southern Rhodesia civilization, and the real-time unfolding history of a reluctant father's long distant past.

Peter is an adult white child of British Africa, a competent reporter, a good observer, a good son, and an excellent writer in a remarkable situation with (at least) three major facets. Imagine being a husband / father of a family in New York trying to take care of aging parents who don't want to leave a country whose functioning society is literally being taken apart daily while your father via email is at long last beginning to clear up the mystery of his own ancestry and experiences as a young Jewish (a surprise) boy in 1939 with a different name (also a surprise) from a different European country than you had always been led to believe (another surprise). All over a 10-year period from the mid-1990's to the early 2000's and, of course, the public part of the story continues today.

A very, very good book, very highly recommended from lots of different viewpoints ... !!

This was one of the most powerful, absorbing, moving and enlightening memoirs I've read in a long time. The way the author weaves his personal narrative in with an expose of the tragedy of life in zimbabwe under mugabe is masterful. His memoir is rich in details that reveal the complexities of his life, but he never loses the thread of his story. I can't read about southern Africa any more without conjuring up images from this book. I couldn't stop reading, and I didn't want the book to end.

Peter Godwin has written a very good follow-up to MUKIWA. His personal account of his family's history in Rhodesia-Zimbabwe is honest and absorbing for a genre that can be self-serving. I hope others will learn from this book that politics are never black or white,just human.

Peter Godwin was born in Rhodesia, and in 1996 he published 'Makiwa', a gripping account of how he grew up in that country. He was conscripted into the Rhodesian army to fight against the independence movement, by which time he felt that he was fighting in an unjust cause. He eventually got to England, became a journalist, and in 1981, now based in the United States, he returned to what in 1980 had become independent Zimbabwe, partly because his parents were still living there and partly because he loved the country and its people. But he now had to record that the new government of Robert Mugabe was more savage than the white government had been and was carrying out bloody suppression in Matabeleland - a sign of things to come. Godwin's reporting at that time made him persona non grata and he had to leave Zimbabwe again, though he was able to return after Mugabe had `stabilized' the country with the so-called Unity Accord in 1987.

This second volume, first published in 2006, is an account of several later visits, beginning with one in 1996. In the chapters relating to 1996, 1997 and 1998, Mugabe's dictatorship is not central to his account, though of course he is aware of it; but he is more concerned with the quite non-political aspects of his family's life. At this time Mugabe had not yet whipped up anti-white agitation. Indeed he had for years encouraged white people to stay and help the Zimbabwean economy. In fact, in the year 2000, "78% of white farmers were on property they had purchased after independence, only when that land had first been offered to -and turned down by - the government, as was required by law" (p.56).

Godwin's next visit was in 2000. That year Mugabe wanted to change the constitution to allow him another 12 years in power; and this change had to be ratified by a referendum. To get the new constitution accepted, he inserted in it a law allowing the seizure of white-owned farm land for redistribution to black peasants (though in fact most of it went to his cronies). His instrument for this were the so-called war veterans, and violence against whites now took off, under such thugs as those calling themselves `Hitler' Hunzvi and `Stalin Mau Mau'. When Mugabe lost the referendum, he unleashed violence also against Tsvangirai's newly created Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

In 2001 there was a total eclipse of the sun over Zimbabwe, and, unusually, there was another one in 2002. The folklore expression for this is that `a crocodile eats the sun', and it is considered the worst of omens. Godwin now chronicles in the most graphic manner the increasing horror of Mugabe's appalling regime and the descent of Zimbabwe into chaos and lawlessness: the ruin of agriculture; the displacement of millions of black farm workers; famine; the government's deliberate withholding of food supplies from areas where the opposition is strong; hyper-inflation; casual murders and robberies, with the police either unwilling to intervene or actually participating in them. Among the many grotesque vignettes: cemeteries plundered, patches of maize planted between the graves, and befouled with excrement; the RSPCA being given permission to evacuate tortured animals from farms - when their white owners are not allowed to leave their besieged homes. Godwin is there during the General Strike of 2003 and its brutal suppression.

But this is not only a journalist's book about Zimbabwe. It is also a touching story of a loving family. The scenes with his gallant and now impoverished, sick and aged parents - who, beleaguered as they are, refuse to leave Zimbabwe - are deeply moving. And there is an unexpected dimension. On a visit in 2001, when he is in his forties, Peter Godwin learns that his father, George, now 77, was not in fact the reserved Anglo-African he had always taken him to be, but was born a Polish Jew. Only now can George bring himself to talk and write about it. The revelation has an immense impact on his son, who inserts a couple of chapters to tell the story of George's Warsaw childhood, how, just before the war, he came to leave Poland as a teenager, without his family. George's mother and sister later perished in Treblinka. Peter Godwin had heard of Auschwitz and Belsen, but (somewhat surprisingly for a journalist) he had never heard of the other extermination camps, which he now researched and whose horrors he then describes.

This beautifully written book is a lament for Zimbabwe, but it is also a tribute to his parents, and it is dedicated to his father's memory.

Peter Godwin's book, titled above, is a very worth while read. In plain dialogue he lets the rest of the world know what is really going on in Zimbabwe in the most sensitive way possible through his own families lives. The book is beautifully written, I couldn't put it down once I started reading it, more especially after following the last fiasco of an election in June 2008. Why the other African nations let Mugabwe get away with what he is doing to his own people, is beyond me. Farms that were productive have now grown wild and uncultivated, and a country that was the bread basket of Africa is now one of the worlds poorest countries, except of course for the government fat cats. Well worth buying and reading

A good description of what is happening to "the man/woman in the street" in Zimbabwe by using the experiences of his aging mother and father.
However, the author fails to set important context as he did not live through the Rhodesia to Zimbabwe transitition. Also, by the time this book was published, Zimbabwe was already accelerating towards complete devastation for 99% of the population.
Ended up a "lightweight" editorial with no recriminations or recommendations.

This book moved me on so many levels. I could not put it down. Godwin's aging parents, his heartbreak about the decline of Zimbabwe, his anguish about living so far away, the fascinating past of his father... it is all so beautifully described. But it is what is not said that will take your breath away. A FANTASTIC book.

I lived in South AFrica for 3 years and knew many Zim refugees, including a farmer's daughter who lost both her legs and her family to a land mine. I also knew many current refugees who just wanted to work and support their families. When are we going to be rid of Mugabe, who has ruined this beautiful country?

While traveling on an overland safari, I ran out of books to read. (Although I brought plenty, as an English teacher, I was devouring them as we drove through the African countryside.) Fortunately, one of the French girls in the back of the truck had just finished a book and was willing to lend it to me. She said that Mukiwa was captivating and that I wouldn't be able to put it down, and she was right. Having already visited Zimbabwe several times, I was fascinated to learn more about the white experience there, especially since I had recently read Catherine Buckle's African Tears, which also describes the current land invasions. Because many tourists don't delve deeper into Zimbabwe than a quick jaunt to Victoria Falls, Godwin's memoir is an important read. Godwin describes the reality of living in a country as tumultuous as it is beautiful. The reader can't help but gain a love of the country himself and come to understand why Godwin would risk his life in returning. Fortunately, I was able to experience a glimpse of the beauty of the country myself while visiting some of their game parks. It was on one of these drives in Hwange that I first fell in love with Africa and can understand why Godwin's parents would risk their lives by choosing to remain. I enjoyed the book so much that I purchased the sequel When a Crocodile Eats the Sun at the Johannesburg Airport. I follow the news in Africa online every day--especially the news of Zimbabwe and South Africa, and cannot express how much I value the insight that Godwin provides in both of these books. I also developed a fondness and empathy for his family as they endure the turbulent times that face Zimbabwe. Despite the many problems that face the continent, I am looking forward to my eighth trip. I have been discussing Godwin's book with my honors students and told them that I plan to read his other three--Wild at Heart, The Three of Us, and Rhodesians Never Die--before I leave.

This is a fast reading book - I couldn't put it down. With Zimbabwe showing up in the headlines almost daily (contested elections, violence against the opposition party), I thought this would be a good book to read. While the story is personal, Godwin as a journalist conveys a lot of information about Zimbabwe's more recent history, politics, and movement/violence against the white farmers. The personal side to Godwin's story is also compelling as he writes of discovering his father's Jewish past and his father's unknown past late in his father's life.

The Power of One: A Novel If you've read The Power of One, you'll have a good background for Peter Godwin's novel. This grim, factual-ish, totally absorbing work is a must-read for all who see Africa as the land of sunshine, safaris, exotic flora and fauna, and Ipi Tombi. It deals with post-war (1998-2006) Zimbabwe in an engaging, intimate, heart-wrenching fashion. It is not a political treatise. It is a stunning showcase of how "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely." The story begins and ends with Peter Godwin's father's death in 2006. The parts in between should be taught in every Pol. Sci class. The writing is excellent, and very accessible; the accounts horrific and frustrating.

WOW! These memoirs, expertly crafted by Peter Godwin, leave the reader still haunted by its horrors, from hospital experiences to burial. The parents leave one Holocaust only to find themselves reentering another! This is a remarkable insight into Mugabe's rule and its after-affects. The Godwins are a fascinating family, each so accomplished and each so loving and patriotic to Zimbabwe. A MUST READ!!!! I LOVED IT AND HAVE RECOMMENDED THIS TO ALL MY FRIENDS WHO IN TURN HAVE LOVED IT!

It opened my heart and eyes to the dire evolving situation in Zimbabwe. The book is beautifully written with passages of passionate beauty for his former homeland. The disclosure of the family secret and haunting parallel to the holocaust are gripping and frightening. Yet, the little stories of personal kindness and heroism helped me make it through the heart wrenching tragedy.

Having visited Botswana on several occasions, specifically the Okavanga "high end" safari camps, I was conscious of the the lack of exposure to the real Africa, the everyday Botswanan life experience. But for diamonds, the foresight of a powerful tribal chief and, among other things, a government committed to local natives investing in eco-tourism, Botswana could have been Zimbabwe. Godwin's "Mukiwa" increased my awareness of colonial Rhodesia and it's collapse into local rule and the emergence of Zimbabwe. "When Crocodiles Eat the Sun" relates Godwin's family's experience as Zimbabwe's social fabric is destroyed under the rule of Robert Mugabe. At the book's end I cried. Not for a romantic return to Rhodesian colonial life and not for what is happening today during the lead up to a re-election, but for what will happen in Zimbabwe's (and Africa's) future.

A book so well-written that you are compelled to keep reading even as the story breaks your heart. Superbly descriptive. A first hand account of the utter moral bankruptcy of modern day Zimbabwe. A must read for the African leaders who seem clueless about their neighboring country.

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.

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.

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