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Description edit
In Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller remembers her African childhood with candor and sensitivity. 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.... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
Summary edit
Alexandra Fuller (Bobo) gives an outstanding account of her life as a white person growing up in Africa from 1975 on. Well written and funny this book tells the truth behind the scenes of every day life for both white and black people in Africa as it struggles with war, famine and sickness.
People edit
- Alexandra Fuller (Bobo): The author herself is the main character telling the story of how she grew up and of her family's struggle to survive through war, illness and famine.
- Alexandra "Bobo" Fuller: Author
- Nicola "Tub" Fuller: Bobo's mum; horsewoman; farm wife
- Tim Fuller: Bobo's Dad; farmer
- Vanessa Fuller: Bobo's sister
- Olivia Fuller: Bobo's baby sister.
- Doud: Doud is the Fuller families cook and is a native of Rhodesia
Quotes edit
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“"This is not a full circle. It's Life carrying on. It's the next breath we all take. It's the choice we make to get on with it."”
Alexandra "Bobo" Fuller
- Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
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This is not a full circle. It’s Life carrying on. It’s the next breath we all take. It’s the choice we make to get on with it.
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The land itself, of course, was careless of its name. It still is. You can call it what you like, fight all the wars you want in its name. Change its name altogether if you like. The land is still unblinking under the African sky. It will absorb white man’s blood and the blood of African men, it will absorb blood from slaughtered cattle and the blood from a woman’s birthing with equal thirst. It doesn’t care.
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But all the history of this land returns to the ground on which we stand, because all of us (black, white, coloured, Indian, old-timers, newcomers) are fighting for the same thing: tillable, rain-turned-over-fresh, fertile, worm-smelling soil. Land on which to grow tobacco, cattle, cotton, soybeans, sheep, women, children.
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In Rhodesia, we are born and then the umbilical cord of each child is sewn straight from the mother onto the ground, where it takes root and grows. Pulling away from the ground causes death by suffocation, starvation. That’s what the people of this land believe. Deprive us of the land and you are depriving us of air, water, food, and sex.
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There is only one time of absolute silence. Halfway between the dark of night and the light of morning, all animals and crickets and birds fall into a profound silence as if pressed quiet by the deep quality of the blackest time of night.
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The incongruous, lawless, joyful, violent, upside-down, illogical certainty of Africa comes at me like a rolling rainstorm, until I am drenched with relief.
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My soul has no home. I am neither African nor English nor am I of the sea.
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The other thing I can’t know about Africa until I have left (and heard the sound of other, colder, quieter, more insulated places) is her noise.
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After Olivia dies, Mum and Dad’s joyful careless embrace of life is sucked away, like water swirling down a drain. The joy is gone. The love has trickled out.
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Zimbabwe, they called the country. From dzimba dza mabwe, “houses of stone.”
Highlighted by 10 Kindle customers
First Sentence edit
flickering yellow light and Van keeps the candle high, looking for snakes and scorpions and baboon spiders. Mum won't kill snakes because she says they help to keep the rats down (but she rescued a nest of baby mice from the barns and left them to grow in my cupboard, where they ate holes in the family's winter jerseys).
Table of Contents edit
Rhodesia 1975
Getting There: Zambia, 1987
Chimurenga: Zambia 1999
Chimurenga: The Beginning
Adrian: Rhodesia, 1968
Coming-Back Babies
Karoi
The Burma Valley
War, 1976
Vanessa
Missionaries: 1975
Olivia: January 1978
Chimurenga: 1979
Violet
Selling, School
Independence
Losing Robandi
Devuli
Matare General
Loo Paper and Coke
Charlie Chilvers, Richard
Nervous Breakdown
Moving On
Malawi
Touching the Ground, The Goat Shed
Mkushi
Balm in the wounds
The Last Christmas
Charlie
Now
Authors & Contributors edit
- Alexandra Fuller (Author)
First Edition edit
Original Language: English
Publisher: Random House
Country: United States
Publication Date: December 18, 2001
ISBN: 978-1402561320
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Country: United States
Publication Date: December 18, 2001
ISBN: 978-1402561320
Page Count: 320
Classification edit
- Library of Congress: DT2990 .F85 2001
- Dewey: 968.9104092
Subjects edit
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