Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier - Softcover

Fuller, Alexandra

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330434357 ISBN 13: 9780330434355

Publisher: Picador, 2004

Synopsis

From the author of Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, a powerful and sometimes painful account of an intense relationship -- between a writer, her words, and those she choses to write about

About this title

Review:

Thomas Wolfe's trusted axiom about not being able to go home again gets a compelling spin through the African veldt in Alexandra Fuller's Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier. Fuller (Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood) journeys through modern Zambia, to battlefields in Zimbabwe and Mozambique with the scarred veteran of the Rhodesian Wars she identifies only as "K". Intrigued by the mysterious neighbour of her parent's Zambian fish farm and further enticed by her father's warning that "curiosity scribbled the cat" ("scribbling" is Afrikaans slang for "killing"), Fuller embarks on a journey that covers as much cratered psychic landscape as it does African bush country. Though she and "K" are both African by family roots rather than blood, she quickly discovers that 30 years of civil war have scarred them--and the indigenous peoples they encounter--in markedly different ways. "K" is a figure of monumental tragedy, a decent man torn by war-fuelled rage, a failed marriage and painful memories of an only son lost to tropical disease. His adopted Christianity offers him only partial absolution, and Fuller details his gut-wrenching confessions of quarter-century old atrocities with compassion and rare insight. Her prose liberally salted with a rich, melange of Afrikaans and local Shona slang, Fuller nonetheless struggles with a narrative whose turns are often unexpected, yet driven by humanity. There's a clear sense that the author's fitful journey into the past with "K" has opened as many wounds as it has healed, and spawned more questions than it has answered. It's that discomfort and frustration that often reinforces the honesty of her prose--and reinforces Thomas Wolfe's adage yet again. --Jerry McCulley, Amazon.com

Review:

Searing, at times intoxicating prose . . . striking, intimately revealing . . . ("The Washington Post") "Scribbling the Cat" defies easy definition . . . [a] wild-hearted beauty of a book. ("O, The Oprah Magazine")

"Searing, at times intoxicating prose... striking, intimately revealing..." The Washington Post

"Scribbling the Cat defies easy definition . . . [a] wild-hearted beauty of a book." O, The Oprah Magazine

"[Scribbling the Cat] is no more a simple profile of an ex-soldier than Fuller's first book, the acclaimed bestseller Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, was merely a memoir of growing up.... The story catches fire." Newsweek

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About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0330434357
• ISBN 13: 9780330434355
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272