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

One of the hardest aspects of this book to stomach is the racism.

She tries to pat the chair next to hers, misses, and feebly slaps the air, her arm like a broken wing. That’s what my sister and I call it when Mum is drunk and her eyelids droop…Like the flag at the post office whenever someone important dies, which in Zambia, with one thing and another, is every other week…”Have a drink with me, Bobo,” she offers. Looming especially large in her tale is her mother, alcoholic, haunted, slightly insane: Fuller fills in these episodes with brief explanations of African history, but her focus is personal. (Not a spoiler I promise! You find out in the first chapters.) Weaving back and forth in time, Fuller recounts snapshots of her family’s experiences in these countries, both serious and lighthearted: from throwing a drunken Christmas celebration to the severe beating taken by a maid. Bobo’s parents think nothing of land mines, inhospitable conditions, terrorists or civil war being the childhood backdrop for their children: Bobo, her older sister Vanessa, and three others who tragically do not make it to adulthood. This book chronicles the life of Alexandra Fuller, called Bobo by her family, growing up in the countries of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Zambia and Malawi during the 70s and 80s. Browsing through an endless sea of paperback romance, sci fi and thrillers, I was excited to find a title I recognized so I paid my 60Q and started to read. This is what lead me to Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, found in a used book shelf in the back of a textile cooperative in Guatemala. When I’m traveling, it can be hard to find books in English, which results in me reading things that are pretty random and outside my normal taste.

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