Dons don’t usually appear to much advantage in fiction.
For those who follow African affairs, these are not happy times. Once regarded as passé, the military coup is enjoying something of a come- back. Men formerly hailed as Renaissance leaders seem bent on being crowned presidents-for-life. From Sudan to Kenya, Somalia to Zimbabwe, carefully negotiated peace deals and coalition governments have either already foundered or quiver on the brink of collapse.
So this book possesses a terrible poignancy. The years it covers — a time when black nationalists in the territories that went on to become today’s Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia campaigned to shrug off white rule — are still comparatively recent history. Yet the hopes of that era were so bright, the belief that an independent Africa would prove a better place than its colonial predecessor so unquenchable, this story almost seems to hail from a different century, or perhaps a parallel universe.
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