Andrea Eames

'We were Whites and nothing else...We huddled together with the rest of the community like pale maggots in a dusty corpse', January 14, 2015

This review is from: The Cry of the Go-Away Bird (Paperback)
Very well written account of the experience of white farmers in Mugabe's Zimbabwe, told from the perspective of a young teenage girl. Narrator Elise has never given much thought to being an 'ethnic minority' - her family are on good terms with their servants, the boss chats with his workers in their language - even her best schoolfriend is black.

But the author does an excellent job of cranking up the tension as things start to change: from her stepfather's initial dismissing of events as 'just a lot of spear rattling before the election', to Elise's awareness that 'Living in Zimbabwe was like having a demanding younger brother or sister. it was loud, disruptive and badly behaved. It...ruined family holidays and dinner conversations, kept everyone up at night worrying about its future.'

Quick but powerful read.… (més)