FREE DONT LETS GO TO THE DOGS TONIGHT: AN AFRICAN CHILDHOOD PDF Alexandra Fuller | 300 pages | 03 Jan 2003 | Pan MacMillan | 9780330490191 | English | London, United Kingdom Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight - Wikipedia Growing up in Rhodesia in the 's Alexandra Fuller had more than the usual mix of childhood perils to cope with. There were scorpions in the swimming pool and snakes in the kitchen. Worms and malaria were daily facts of life, as were the threats of land mines and guerrilla ambush. The country was in the midst of an armed struggle -- pitting white settlers, determined to hold onto white rule, against black nationalists, agitating for independence -- and the author's parents patrolled their farm with loaded weapons. Like most white children over 5, Ms. Fuller recalls, she and her sister, Vanessa, learned ''how to load an FN rifle magazine, strip and clean all the guns in the house, and ultimately, shoot-to-kill. To go to town, the family was required to travel in a convoy, accompanied by a mine-detecting vehicle and two or three trucks filled with Rhodesian soldiers. On such occasions family members would dress up in their best clothes: in case they were killed in an ambush or blown up by a mine on the way to town, they would ''be presentable to go and sit on the left hand of Godthefather. Fuller's gripping memoir, ''Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight,'' is made up, in equal parts, of stark, matter-of-fact reminiscences about her childhood and fierce, Dinesen-esque paeans to the land of Africa. Although short, italicized passages chronicle the wrongs that whites committed against black Africans in the region -- from the Rudd Concession ofwhich ''tricked King Lobengula of the Matabeles into surrendering mineral rights to the British South Africa Company,'' through the Land Apportionment Act ofwhich allotted '' Fuller does not judge, rationalize or explain her parents' commitment to white rule. Instead she simply describes what it was like to grow up in Rhodesia in the 70's, knowing that she had the power to fire her nanny if she wanted to, knowing that she attended a Class A school while black children attended a Class C school. The Dont Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood narrative, much like the early fiction of Nadine Gordimer, gives the reader an intimate sense of what daily life was like in a segregated and racist society and its insidious emotional fallout on children and grown-ups alike. Some of Ms. Fuller's memories are alarming to say the least. She recalls family members cheering when they ''hear the faint stomach-echoing thump of a mine detonating,'' which means that ''either an African or a baboon has been wounded or killed. And Ms. Fuller recounts her own initial unease at boarding school at having to use the same table linens used by black students. The change in government meant that the Fullers' farm in the Burma Valley was put up for mandatory auction under a new land distribution program, and the family embarked on what would be a series of moves: first to a ranch in a hot, oppressive region of Zimbabwe once deemed on a map ''Not Fit for White Man's Habitation''; next, to a big, Spanish-style house in Malawi, where the Fullers feel they are ''dangerously, teeteringly close to disease and death in a slow, rotting, swamp- induced fashion ''; and later to a lovely farm in Zambia, which seems like ''the logical place for this family to stop. And mend. Certainly Dont Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood is a lot to recover from. In addition to losing their Burma Valley farm, the Fullers lose three children: one dies of meningitis; the second wanders off while no one is looking and drowns Dont Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood a neighbor's pond; the third dies at birth. After the death of baby Olivia, the author observes, her mother is never quite the same: her giddy social drinking gives way to alcoholic despair and a series of breakdowns. Eventually, a diagnosis of manic depression is made. The author's father meanwhile succumbs to bouts of reckless behavior, driving wildly while drunk and taunting armed soldiers at roadblocks to shoot him or let him by. What sustains the Fullers through Dont Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood difficulties and what lends this book its power is the family's unaccommodated love for Africa, a love untainted, perhaps even galvanized, by their isolation and their travails. In their arduous efforts to farm the land -- to plant and harvest a crop of tobacco and see it safely to market; to reclaim a farmhouse from termites and rats and the encroaching jungle -- there is a hard-won respect for nature and Africa's tropical defiance of human order. In these pages Ms. Fuller conjures up a tactile sense of the landscape she loves. Its smell: ''hot, sweet, smoky, salty, sharp-soft,'' like ''black tea, cut tobacco, fresh fire, old sweat, young grass. She shows us droughts so advanced that crocodiles are seen in farmers' fields, prowling the dirt in search of water, and she shows us rains so intense that six-foot monitor lizards are washed from their swamps into people's homes. She describes landscapes populated by leopards and snakes and a cruel plant called the buffalo bean, which has hairs that ''can stimulate a reaction so severe, Dont Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood burning and persistent, that it has been known to send grown men mad. In short Ms. Fuller gives us in this book the Africa she knew as a girl, a place of cruel politics, violent heat and startling beauty, a land she makes vivid in all its ''incongruous, lawless, joyful, violent, upside-down, illogical certainty. Dont Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood on timesmachine. TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. Random House. Home Page World U. NPR Choice page Alexandra Fuller's book tells the story of her family of white Zimbabwean tenant farmers in the years before and after Independence. These are not the wealthy landowners demonised by the present Zimbabwean government; they struggle to make a living off the land, as well as the usual hazards of the African bush, they fear landmines and attacks by guerrillas crossing the border from Mozambique. During the civil war, their parents join the police reserve. Bobo and her sister are warned not to come into their parents' bedroom in the night because they sleep with loaded guns. Then at IndependenceBobo and her classmates are stunned to see black pupils far wealthier and more sophisticated than them joining their elite high school. Their farm is seized by the new government and awarded to political cronies under a land distribution programme and they move south to a much harsher ranch, where their diet is based on impala and brackish water from a borehole that is strictly rationed. From Zimbabwe, the Fullers move to Malawi, where they are closely watched by government agents, notably a houseboy Dont Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood presents himself for employment and will Dont Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood take 'no' for an answer. When Bobo's father jokingly describes his newly built beach hut on the shore of Lake Malawi as 'a palace', the houseboy makes his report and the carload of presidential officials who rush down to inspect it are furious to find a hut made of mud, poles and thatch. When the family moves on to Zambia, they have lived in every country in the former Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. With the resilience of childhood, Bobo takes extraordinary events in her stride. The politics and the everyday struggle to make a living from the land are mixed with family tragedy; a sister drowned, a brother dead from meningitis and another stillborn. The family handle their mother's alcoholism and insanity with the same stoicism they handle any other misfortune, though they do occasionally compare themselves to families with Dont Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood mothers, clean swimming pools, home baking and children free of worms. The title is taken from a line by the writer and humorist AP Herbert, 'Don't let's go to the dogs tonight, for mother will be there'. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. New York Times. Retrieved 13 January Retrieved 30 November Hidden categories: Articles needing additional references from November All articles needing additional references. Namespaces Article Talk. Views Read Edit View history. Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file. Download as PDF Printable version. Add links. Alexandra Fuller’s African childhood | Autobiography and memoir | The Guardian Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. 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. Get A Copy. Paperbackpages. More Details Original Title. Zimbabwe Malawi Zambia. Other Editions Friend Reviews.