
Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight
Synopsis
With an introduction by author Anne Enright.
Shortlisted for the Guardian First Book award, a story of civil war and a family's unbreakable bond.
How you see a country depends on whether you are driving through it, or live in it. How you see a country depends on whether or not you can leave it, if you have to.
As the daughter of white settlers in the civil war in 1970s Rhodesia (renamed Zimbabwe at independence), Alexandra Fuller remembers her childhood in this extraordinary and devastating memoir. Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight is the astonishingly clear-eyed story of a family living through a civil war, of a quixotic battle with nature and loss. It is the story of the end of empire, of prejudice and privilege, too much drink and not many rules, violence and shattering grief.
Shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, Alexandra Fuller's classic memoir of an African childhood is suffused with laughter and warmth even amid disaster. Unsentimental and unflinching, but always enchanting, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight is the story of an extraordinary family in an extraordinary time.
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Reviews
Like Frank McCourt, Fuller writes with devastating humour and directness about desperate circumstances . . . tender, remarkableDaily Telegraph
A book that deserves to be read for generationsGuardian
Perceptive, generous, political, tragic, funny, stamped through with a passionate love for Africa . . . [Fuller] has a faultless hotline to her six-year-old selfIndependent
This enchanting book is destined to become a classic of Africa and of childhoodSunday Times