When a Crocodile Eats the Sun by Peter Godwin: book review

When a Crocodile Eats the Sun (2006) is Peter Godwin’s reportage and biography of his birthplace, Zimbabwe, from July 1996 to February 2004.

The award-winning journalist, now living in New York, was on assignment in Zululand when he received a telephone call from his mother in Zimbabwe telling him that his father was ill. Peter travels immediately to Zimbabwe as his father’s health deteriorates.

He chronicles his father’s illness against the historic times of Zimbabwe’s political landscape. He writes of the country’s independence from colonial rule in 1980 and the shift from ‘’white-dominated Rhodesia to black-ruled Zimbabwe.’’ He writes of President Robert Mugabe’s politics, racial violence, the exodus of white farmers, and his parents refusal to leave the country throughout its upheaval.

Peter also writes of personal times, such as his sister Georgina’s wedding, the birth of his son Thomas in 2000 and his son Hugh in 2001, his wife Joanna, the purchase of their apartment in New York, and the re-burial of his sister Jain, who died brutally at the age of 27.

As Peter reconnects with his father he learns of the secret his father George has kept for 54 years, which his mother Helen supported and sustained. A brief two chapters (George’s birth in 1924 and the Blitzkrieg in 1940) recount his father’s catastrophic past, even as his father says, ‘’I find it quite amazing how little I remember.’’

The title of the book is a reference to the total eclipse of the sun across Zimbabwe in June 2001, the first solar eclipse of the millennium.

This is both a personal and an historic account of many tragedies that have affected the lives of the Godwin family, particularly his father, and his country’s citizens. It is poignant and emotional, but also insightful and factual. It’s a heart-breaking read, respectful of his father’s secretive past, and one which the author must comes to terms with, because it is now his history, his future.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).