Books Set in Africa: Zimbabwe

When a Crocodile Eats the Sun by Peter Godwin (2006)

The saying, “When a Crocodile Eats the Sun,” comes from a belief in some remote villages of Zimbabwe that a crocodile eats the sun when a solar eclipse occurs. This event is a very bad omen, signaling the celestial crocodile's displeasure with the behavior of humans living on earth.

At the beginning of the 2000s, two total eclipses occurred within the span of less than two years. The Zimbabwe villagers became very scared, saying that the crocodile must be very angry with humans, with the threat of perpetual darkness occurring so close together.

When a Crocodile Eats the Sun is Peter Godwin's memoir, recounting the final years of his father's life. Godwin grew up in Zimbabwe. His parents emigrated to Rhodesia, as Zimbabwe was formerly known, after World War II. Following several years of a civil war, which pitted black nationalists against white settlers, the country was becoming increasingly more violent. Robert Mugabe's government began taking over white-owned commercial farms and began redistributing the land to his supporters, who had no farming knowledge or interest. The government refused to acknowledge the AIDS epidemic and refused assistance from other countries. The life expectancy plummeted to about 34 years.

Mubage's henchmen, men who began calling themselves "War Vets", began terrorizing white farmers. Many of the so-called War Vets had not actually fought in the War of Independence, but were actually a band of rogues and Mugabe supporters, whom others began calling "Wovets. They carried out their threats with AK-47s and machetes. Many farm owners lost their lives in confrontations with the Wovits. Many of the wovit leaders took such names as Hitler Hunzvi, Comarade Satin and Stalin Mau Mau.

Peter's parents were white liberals, his mother was a physician in a black hospital. When she was in need of a hip replacement, she insisted on being treated in the same hospital where she worked instead of opting for a better-equip facility.

In 1978, shortly before her wedding, the author's older sister, Jain, and her fiance, were ambushed in a guerrilla attack. Later her grave is desecrated by wovits, simply because she is interned in a white cemetery.

Mugabe turns many blacks against the whites. Mavis, the Godwin's housekeeper, whom they regarded as a member of the family, began stealing from them and demanding money. The elderly Mr. Godwin was attacked outside the gates of his house. Fires are set in the bushes surrounding their house. Despite all this, the Godwin's refuse to leave the country that has been their home for 50 years.

When his father suffers a heart attack, Peter returns from his overseas journalist job to tend to his parents. He finds a photograph of a middle-aged couple and a young girl. His mother informs him that the people in the picture are his paternal grandparents and aunt. With this comes the knowledge that the man known as George Godwin was actually a Polish Jew named Kazimierz Goldfarb. He had been sent to England to a boarding school in 1939, thereby surviving the ensuing Holocaust. The rest of his family was not so lucky. His mother and sister were killed in the Holocaust. Although his father survived and remarried, George never saw him again. Instead, he reinvented himself as an Anglo and moved to the deepest part of Africa.

George Godwin observes that being a white in Zimbabwe is a bit like being a Jew in Poland during the Holocaust.

Read: October 25, 2009

Books Set In Israel

Drawing in the Dust by Zoe Klein (2009)

This was another book that I just picked up off the shelf at the public Library.

Archaeologist Page Brookstone has spent her entire career unearthing ancient remains in the Middle East, most specifically at the battlegrounds of Megiddo. She is single, convinced that the Lou Gehrig's disease that affected her father will fall upon her as well. Her mentor, Norris Anderson, is the lead archaeologist at the Migiddo dig. He has a romantic interest in Page, which she does not return.

One day an Arab couple, Ibrahim and Aisha Barakat, go to Migiddo, hunt out Page and ask that she excavate the ground beneath their house. They are convinced that their house is haunted by a pair of spirits. The spirits, they claim, are lovers.

Against the advice of her mentor, Page decides to investigate. She finds that Ibrahim has already begin digging through the floor of his living room. Page is intrigued and ultimately finds a cistern beneath the Barakat house.

In the course of her excavation, she finds wonderful artifacts along with the bones of the prophet Jeremiah and a mysterious woman named Anatiya. Buried with the entwined skeletons is a collection of jars which contain the Anatiya scrolls. Page photographs the scrolls and asks her best friend, Jordanna, to translate them.

Page also meets Mortichai Masters, an Orthodox Jew whose mother is a Russian Jew and whose father is Irish Catholic. Mortichai is newly observant and engaged to marry the rabbi's daughter. Soon, however, the chemistry between Page and Mortichai is too much to ignore.

The book started off with a bang, but the momentum couldn't be sustained. It was an interesting book and filled with biblical knowledge. The end, however, couldn't live up to the first pages.

Read: October 16, 2009

Books Set in Victorian England: London

The Singing Fire by Lilian Nattel

This novel is set in Victorian England and follows two Jewish women who immigrate to London. Nehama is from shtel and has dreams of making money and sending for her parents and sisters. Emilia is from a wealthly family in Minsk who leaves for London to escape her tyrant father after finding herself pregnant.

Both have their dreams dashed in London, a city dealing with the "Jewish" question. Nehama finds herself quickly lured into prostitution When she leaves this life, she is taken in by a couple who nurture her and she eventually finds a loving husband.

Emilia abandons her newborn daughter to Nehama who raises her. Emilia "passes" as a gentile and marries a Jew, only to be faced with conversion before her child is born.

The author makes some interesting points about Jewish life in mid-Victorian England, but the novel itself is disjointed.

Read: October 11, 2009

Books Set in the United States: The Carolinas

Strangers in the Land of Egypt by Stephen March (2009)

I picked this book up at my local library without knowing anything about it. It is a fascinating story of the rural south and the anti-Semitism that is still very prevalent there.

Jesse Terrill is a young teen-aged boy, whose mother left the family and whose father was seriously brain-damaged by an act of violence. In addition, Jesse's older brother was killed in a terrorist attack while serving abroad. Jesse is now living with his uncle.

One evening, Jesse and some of his wild buddies go out and vandalize the local synagogue. He is arrested and tried. Because he refuses to name is friends, he takes the fall for the crime. The judge seeing some goodness in Jesse, places him on a 2 year probation and requires him to do community service. He is assigned to assist Mendal Ebban, an elderly Jewish Holocaust survivor living in a nursing home.

Ebban is a religious Jew who is still very tortured by the events he survived in the concentration camp. He is wheelchair bound and his eyesight does not permit him to read. He has Jesse read Torah to him. Slowly they form a friendship in which Ebban teaches Jesse the ethics of living a good life.

While Jesse struggles to behave, so as not to be sent to the brutal detention center, he is faced with dealing with some not-so-gentle people. He wants to take revenge on the man whom he thinks injured his father. Jesse comes up with what he thinks is the perfect plan, and he fantasizes about how he will carry out his plan.

One of his friends is LaFay, who has an abusive boyfriend. Jesse gets into a fight with the boyfriend, seriously injuring him. When Jesse is later beaten and left for dead, he refuses to tell the police the details of his attack for fear that he will be sent to the detention center for his own prior attack on LaFay's boyfriend.

This was a beautifully written book about a young boy's struggle to be good in a terrifying world.

Read: October 3, 2009