A compelling and, ultimately, heartbreaking story that demands to be read by anyone concerned about contemporary Africa.
The remarkable odyssey of a reporter’s attempt to cover the news and stay alive during a country’s descent into ruin.
American journalist Meldrum arrived in Zimbabwe in 1980 as a reporter for the British newspaper The Guardian, enthused with the assignment of reporting from the newly independent nation that had only recently emerged from years of white domination as Rhodesia. He left in 2003, physically expelled by the government of Robert Mugabe, in defiance of its own judiciary. At the time of his expulsion, he was the last foreign journalist reporting from a country that had suffered from two decades of Mugabe’s tyranny and corruption. Meldrum’s memoir of his Zimbabwe years is a harrowing and deeply disturbing record of that country’s downward spiral as the basic tenets of civilized society were ripped asunder: the repression of Zimbabwe’s once-free press, violent attacks against political opposition, the destruction of the national economy amid blatant mismanagement, the rise of a thuggish military elite to maintain dictatorial order, and divide-and-conquer policies that fostered racial and tribal animosity, with horrific results. Meldrum’s ability to stay alive and focused during this period is a tribute to his indefatigable spirit, and his crisp narrative is remarkably free of rancor toward those who wreaked havoc around him. Even more amazing were the many courageous opponents of the Mugabe regime who faced harassment, police assault, and imprisonment for daring voice their disgust with the deterioration of Zimbabwe. Their voices, while censored at home, speak loud and clear through Meldrum’s reporting, though their criticism meets only the virtual silence and inaction of the United Nations, various American and European governments and neighboring African nations. For his expulsion, Meldrum emerged from imprisonment and trial and was charged with being a threat to national security. That he left Zimbabwe alive is itself something of a miracle.
A compelling and, ultimately, heartbreaking story that demands to be read by anyone concerned about contemporary Africa.Pub Date: June 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-87113-896-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
