Last Days In Cloud Cuckooland

Graham Boynton

ISBN 10: 0679432043 / ISBN 13: 9780679432043

Published by Random House Incorporated, 1997

About this Item

A former anti-apartheid journalist offers an incisive study of white African culture, discussing the various roles of whites in Africa, the changing world of South Africa, and the controversial concept of recolonization as a solution to the post-colonial problem. 20,000 first printing. Former library book. Mylar protector included. Please note the image in this listing is a stock photo and may not match the covers of the actual item. Seller Inventory # 123550199

Bibliographic Details

Title: Last Days In Cloud Cuckooland

Publisher: Random House Incorporated

Publication Date: 1997

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Good

Dust Jacket Condition: Good

Book Type: Ex-Library

About this title

Synopsis:

Last Days in Cloud Cuckooland is Graham Boynton's account of the final gasps of white culture on the continent, from the flight of the Belgian refugees from the Congo in 1960 through the first years of Nelson Mandela's presidency in South Africa. In a series of graphic accounts of the human dramas marking this disorderly retreat, he illuminates the complexity and ambiguity of the role of the whites in Africa. They "were never a unified gang of cold-hearted supremacists," he writes, "any more than the blacks in Africa have been a saintly group of idealists and altruists."
It is an evocative story, and as it unfolds the author is drawn toward a controversial conclusion. If the white colonials did a rather poor job of making Africa work, he argues, then their African successors have done considerably worse.

About the Author:

Graham Boynton was raised in Bulawayo, Rhodesia, and later emigrated to South Africa, where he attended Natal University and worked as a journalist. In 1975 he was expelled from South Africa because of his opposition to apartheid. He worked for many years as a journalist in London and now lives in New York with his wife and two children.