Peter Godwin an award-winning writer is on assignment in Zululand when he is summoned by his mother to Zimbabwe his birthplace. His father is seriously ill; she fears he is dying. Godwin finds his country once a post-colonial success story descending into a vortex of violence & racial hatred. His father recovers but over the next few years Godwin travels regularly between his family life in Manhattan & the increasing chaos of Zimbabwe with its rampant inflation & land seizures making famine a very real prospect. It is against this backdrop that Godwin discovers a fifty-year-old family secret one which changes everything he thought he knew about his father & his own place in the world. Peter Godwins book combines vivid reportage moving personal stories & revealing memoir & traces his familys quest to belong in hostile lands -- a quest that spans three continents & half a century. Heartbreaking.. . Godwin plainly loves Africa & he captures the baffling wayward contradictions of its people their cruelties & unexpected kindnesses their nobility of spirit in the face of appalling conditions with humour & grace Daily Mail A wonderful book.. .beautifully written packed with insight & free of rancour Literary Review A strong heroic book... too vivid to bear & too central to our concerns to ignore Edmund White