Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight

Author: Alexandra Fuller
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0375758992
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 338

Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A worthy heir to Isak Dinesen and Beryl Markham, Alexandra Fuller shares visceral memories of her childhood in Africa, and of her headstrong, unforgettable mother. “This is not a book you read just once, but a tale of terrible beauty to get lost in over and over.”—Newsweek “By turns mischievous and openhearted, earthy and soaring . . . hair-raising, horrific, and thrilling.”—The New Yorker Though it is a diary of an unruly life in an often inhospitable place, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight is suffused with Fuller’s endearing ability to find laughter, even when there is little to celebrate. Fuller’s debut is unsentimental and unflinching but always captivating. In wry and sometimes hilarious prose, she stares down disaster and looks back with rage and love at the life of an extraordinary family in an extraordinary time. From 1972 to 1990, Alexandra Fuller—known to friends and family as Bobo—grew up on several farms in southern and central Africa. Her father joined up on the side of the white government in the Rhodesian civil war, and was often away fighting against the powerful black guerilla factions. Her mother, in turn, flung herself at their African life and its rugged farm work with the same passion and maniacal energy she brought to everything else. Though she loved her children, she was no hand-holder and had little tolerance for neediness. She nurtured her daughters in other ways: She taught them, by example, to be resilient and self-sufficient, to have strong wills and strong opinions, and to embrace life wholeheartedly, despite and because of difficult circumstances. And she instilled in Bobo, particularly, a love of reading and of storytelling that proved to be her salvation. Alexandra Fuller writes poignantly about a girl becoming a woman and a writer against a backdrop of unrest, not just in her country but in her home. But Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight is more than a survivor’s story. It is the story of one woman’s unbreakable bond with a continent and the people who inhabit it, a portrait lovingly realized and deeply felt. Praise for Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight “Riveting . . . [full of] humor and compassion.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “The incredible story of an incredible childhood.”—The Providence Journal

Leaving Before the Rains Come

Author: Alexandra Fuller
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698145615
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 210

Book Description
The New York Times Bestseller from the author of Travel Light, Move Fast "One of the gutsiest memoirs I've ever read. And the writing--oh my god the writing."—Entertainment Weekly A child of the Rhodesian wars and daughter of two deeply complicated parents, Alexandra Fuller is no stranger to pain. But the disintegration of Fuller’s own marriage leaves her shattered. Looking to pick up the pieces of her life, she finally confronts the tough questions about her past, about the American man she married, and about the family she left behind in Africa. A breathtaking achievement, Leaving Before the Rains Come is a memoir of such grace and intelligence, filled with such wit and courage, that it could only have been written by Alexandra Fuller. Leaving Before the Rains Come begins with the dreadful first years of the American financial crisis when Fuller’s delicate balance—between American pragmatism and African fatalism, the linchpin of her unorthodox marriage—irrevocably fails. Recalling her unusual courtship in Zambia—elephant attacks on the first date, sick with malaria on the wedding day—Fuller struggles to understand her younger self as she overcomes her current misfortunes. Fuller soon realizes what is missing from her life is something that was always there: the brash and uncompromising ways of her father, the man who warned his daughter that "the problem with most people is that they want to be alive for as long as possible without having any idea whatsoever how to live." Fuller’s father—"Tim Fuller of No Fixed Abode" as he first introduced himself to his future wife—was a man who regretted nothing and wanted less, even after fighting harder and losing more than most men could bear. Leaving Before the Rains Come showcases Fuller at the peak of her abilities, threading panoramic vistas with her deepest revelations as a fully grown woman and mother. Fuller reveals how, after spending a lifetime fearfully waiting for someone to show up and save her, she discovered that, in the end, we all simply have to save ourselves. An unforgettable book, Leaving Before the Rains Come is a story of sorrow grounded in the tragic grandeur and rueful joy only to be found in Fuller’s Africa.

Scribbling the Cat

Author: Alexandra Fuller
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 0330542982
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 255

Book Description
When Alexandra "Bo" Fuller was in Zambia a few years ago visiting her parents, she asked her father about a nearby banana farmer who was known for being a "tough bugger". Her father's response was a warning to steer clear of him: "Curiosity scribbled the cat," he told Bo. Nonetheless, Fuller began her strange friendship with the man she calls K, a white African and veteran of the Rhodesian War. With the same fiercely beautiul prose that won her such acclaim for Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, Fuller here recounts her friendship with K. He is, seemingly, a man of contradictions. Tattooed, battle-scarred, and weathered by farm work, K is a lion of a man, feral and bulletproof. Yet he is also a born-again Christian, given to weeping when he recollects his failed romantic life and welling up inside with memories of battle. For his war, like all wars, was a brutal one, marked by racial strife, jungle battles, brutal tortures, and the murdering of innocent civilians. Like all the veterans of the war, K has blood on his hands. Driven by K's memories, Fuller and K decide to enter the heart of darkness in the most literal way, by traveling from Zambia through Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) and Mozambique to visit the scenes of the war and to meet other veterans. What results from Fuller's journey is a remarkably unbiased and unsentimental glimpse at life in Africa, a land that besets its creatures with pests, plagues, and natural disasters, making the people there at once more hardened and more vulnerable than elsewhere.

Summary of Alexandra Fuller's Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight

Author: Everest Media,
Publisher: Everest Media LLC
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 55

Book Description
Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 When I wake in the night, I call Vanessa because she isn’t armed. Van! Van, hey! I hiss across the room until she wakes up. Then Vanessa hands me the candle, and we pee sleepily into the flickering yellow light. #2 The loo can be unpredictable. It can either refuse to flush at all or just gurgle and splutter water. It can be scary, but you have to get used to it. #3 I can hear July setting tea on the veranda, and I can smell the first fresh singe of Dad’s morning cigarette. I balance Fred on my shoulder and come out for tea: strong with no sugar, a splash of milk, the way Mum likes it.

Quiet Until the Thaw

Author: Alexandra Fuller
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735223351
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
The debut novel from the bestselling author of Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight and Leaving Before the Rains Come. “Awe inspiring . . . An ardent, original, and beautifully wrought book.” —The New York Times Book Review Lakota Oglala Sioux Nation, South Dakota. Two Native American cousins, Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson, are pitted against each other as their tribe is torn apart by infighting. Rick chooses the path of peace and stays; You Choose, violent and unpredictable, strikes out on his own. When he returns, after three decades behind bars, he disrupts the fragile peace and threatens the lives of the entire reservation. A complex tale that spans generations and geography, Quiet Until the Thaw conjures, with the implications of an oppressed history, how we are bound not just to immediate family but to all who have come before and will come after us, and, most of all, to the notion that everything was always, and is always, connected.

Skinner's Drift

Author: Lisa Fugard
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743273338
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 327

Book Description
In this beautiful and brutal debut novel, the new South Africa comes to life with its violent history, as Eva van Rensburg confronts her dying father with a terrible secret from her childhood.

Scribbling the Cat

Author: Alexandra Fuller
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101118806
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Book Description
When Alexandra ("Bo") Fuller was home in Zambia a few years ago, visiting her parents for Christmas, she asked her father about a nearby banana farmer who was known for being a "tough bugger." Her father's response was a warning to steer clear of him; he told Bo: "Curiosity scribbled the cat." Nonetheless, Fuller began her strange friendship with the man she calls K, a white African and veteran of the Rhodesian war. With the same fiercely beautiful prose that won her acclaim for Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, Fuller here recounts her friendship with K. K is, seemingly, a man of contradictions: tattooed, battle scarred, and weathered by farm work, he is a lion of a man, feral and bulletproof. Yet he is also a born-again Christian, given to weeping when he recollects his failed romantic life, and more than anything else welling up inside with memories of battle. For his war, like all wars, was a brutal one, marked by racial strife, jungle battles, unimaginable tortures, and the murdering of innocent civilians—and K, like all the veterans of the war, has blood on his hands. Driven by K's memories, Fuller and K decide to enter the heart of darkness in the most literal way—by traveling from Zambia through Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) and Mozambique to visit the scenes of the war and to meet other veterans. It is a strange journey into the past, one marked at once by somber reflections and odd humor and featuring characters such as Mapenga, a fellow veteran who lives with his pet lion on a little island in the middle of a lake and is known to cope with his personal demons by refusing to speak for days on end. What results from Fuller's journey is a remarkably unbiased and unsentimental glimpse of men who have killed, mutilated, tortured, and scrambled to survive during wartime and who now must attempt to live with their past and live past their sins. In these men, too, we get a glimpse of life in Africa, a land that besets its creatures with pests, plagues, and natural disasters, making the people there at once more hardened and more vulnerable than elsewhere. Scribbling the Cat is an engrossing and haunting look at war, Africa, and the lines of sanity.

A Dictionary of Quotations

Author: Alexander Norman Jeffares
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780760706022
Category : Quotations
Languages : en
Pages : 1050

Book Description
Over 20, 000 quotations, both classic and modern, on thousands of alphabetically arranged subjects.

Chambers Dictionary of Quotations

Author: Alison Jones
Publisher: Larousse Kingfisher Chambers
ISBN:
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 1544

Book Description
'If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.' -- Derek Bok 'I don't want to achieve immortality through my work...I want to achieve it through not dying.' -- Woody Allen 'Life loves the liver of it' -- Maya Angelou An indispensable and comprehensive reference for writers, speakers, educators, executives, and curious browsers, the Chambers Dictionary of Quotations offers more than 20,000 quotations spanning all historical periods and covering diverse aspects of human experience, from politics and feminism, literature and sex, to nature, notable persons, and more. International in scope and broad in coverage, this compendium gathers together notable quotes -- many of which have never been collected before -- from more than 4,000 sources including such contemporary quotables as Salman Rushdie, Maya Angelou, and Henry Kissinger. Each quote is fully annotated, reliably sourced, and put in context along with concise biographical information on its author. Alphabetically arranged by speaker, and extensively cross-referenced, this easy-to-use reference includes a detailed index that facilitates searches by keyword. Readers can quickly locate a quotation on a particular subject, check a half-remembered line, sample the style and philosophy of an author or simply browse through and savor the accumulated wit and wisdom of the ages. The ultimate source of who said what -- and when they said it.

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations

Author: Una McGovern
Publisher: Webster's New World
ISBN:
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 1310

Book Description
One of the most comprehensive collections of its kind features more than 21,000 quotes from 3,500 authors, arranged alphabetically by author with a complete keyword index, mini-biographies of the authors, and notes on source and historical context.