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Narrated by Kevin Hanssen
Douglas RogersUnabridged — 12 hours, 32 minutes
Narrated by Kevin Hanssen
Douglas RogersUnabridged — 12 hours, 32 minutes
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Rogers's tale is reminiscent of Peter Godwin's When a Crocodile Eats the Sun…This vibrant, tragic and surprisingly funny book is the best account yet of ordinary life—for blacks and whites—under Mugabe's dictatorship.
—The New York Times
Starred Review.
Born in Zimbabwe, New York-based travel writer Rogers moves between two worlds with wit and grace while telling the dire-straits story of his childhood in Zimbabwe and his recent return. Zimbabwe's extremes of beauty and corruption will lure readers into the everyday struggle to preserve property and life against punishing weather, astronomical inflation, and the threat of other people. Angst, humor, beauty and terror mingle freely in his narrative: returning home he finds the family's backpacker lodge has become a brothel, and estates of "irises and tulips and acres of pruned white roses" have disappeared. He marvels at the "untamed roots of blazing flamboyant trees... buckling the city's pavement," the metamorphosis of the hardscrabble poor into diamond dealers, and his own parents: "instead of being crushed by this struggle, beaten down, they had been buoyed by it." This rousing memoir should win over anyone with a taste for exotic can't-go-home-again stories.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
As President Mugabe's regime turns belligerent toward white farmers, journalist Rogers witnesses the struggle of his family and others to hold on to their land....Rogers' decision to write about his parents' lodge and the people who find refuge there as violence erupts and the economy turns catastrophic brings him close to all kinds of people, black and white, from war veterans and politicians to farmers and squatters. Scrupulous in his documentation, Rogers talks to everybody about the way things were and what might come next....Brilliantly funny and wry.
A Brooklyn travel writer returns to his South African homeland to rescue the family farm from imminent danger. Born and raised in Zimbabwe, Rogers kept his eye on the tumultuous political situation in his native land from afar, as white farmers, a small fraction of Africa's population, were routinely murdered or terrorized into surrendering their farm land. This posed a distressing situation for the author since his parents owned and operated Drifters, a backpacker tourist lodge attached to a farm. Rogers traveled from his London home in 2002 to pen an article on the upheaval, arriving in the midst of a presidential electoral scandal while the unrelenting land invasions continued to force thousands to flee. The stories recounted by his parents were horrific. Neighboring farms were being ambushed by "war veterans" violently reclaiming land under the auspices of President Robert Mugabe. By 2004, Rogers, now in his late 30s, had relocated to a middle-class Brooklyn neighborhood with his fiancee. But things continued to degrade for his incredibly resilient parents, who found themselves surrounded by prostituting "settlers," illegal diamond dealers and a marijuana plantation, all while the secret meetings of the anti-Mugabe "Movement for Democratic Change" prospered. The author's parents' worst fears were confirmed when a family friend warned that a ruthless, powerful political commissar had moved in across the street-"an organizer, a militant, an idealogue, someone who might get the settlers riled up about more land and eyeing my parents' own home"-set to wreak havoc on the family business. Fortunately, some clever negotiating mediated disaster, and a unification rally energized the camp ofMugabe rival Morgan Tsvangirai. But more trouble awaited the farm, along with lots of legal wrangling and a bittersweet, disquieting conclusion. Though the second half of the book meanders and diminishes in urgency, the Mozambique frontier of the author's youth remains a deadly, perfidious place to behold, near or far. Eye-opening memoir weaving violent Zimbabwean politics with the camaraderie and fearlessness of a family in crisis. Author events out of New York
"This vibrant, tragic and surprsingly funny book is the best account yet of ordinary life—for blacks and whites—under Mugabe’s dictatorship."
—The New York Times Book Review
"A nuanced, funny, and heartbreaking story."
—The New Yorker
"A gorgeous, open-hearted book. Rogers manages to do the vital work of taking race out of Zimbabwe's story and putting the heart and humanity back into it. A must read for anyone who really wants to understand the extraordinary decency of ordinary Zimbabweans."
—Alexandra Fuller, author of Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight
"I read it in one sitting. I loved it.”
—Rian Malan, author of My Traitor's Heart
"Do we really need another memoir by a white Zimbabwean? The surprising answer is yes, if it's as good as Douglas Rogers' THE LAST RESORT….A ripping yarn….[moves] beyond memoir to become a chronicle of a nation. There is black and white, yes, but much more in the shades and tones of their mix—and it is in exploring them that Rogers, too, find his art."
—Time
"Zimbabwe in vertiginous decline is the backdrop for Douglas Rogers’s corrosively funny THE LAST RESORT, in which Roger’s parents, among the country’s last remaining white farmers, attract everyone from prostitutes and diamond dealers to their backpacker lodge."
—Vogue, featured in "The Season's Best Memoirs"
"Born in Zimbabwe, New York-based travel writer Rogers moves between two worlds with wit and grace while telling the dire-straits story of his childhood in Zimbabwe and his recent return....Angst, humor, beauty and terror mingle freely in his narrative....This rousing memoir should win over anyone with a taste for exotic can't-go-home-again stories.
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"As President Mugabe's regime turns belligerent toward white farmers, journalist Rogers witnesses the struggle of his family and others to hold on to their land....Rogers' decision to write about his parents' lodge and the people who find refuge there as violence erupts and the economy turns catastrophic brings him close to all kinds of people, black and white, from war veterans and politicians to farmers and squatters. Scrupulous in his documentation, Rogers talks to everybody about the way things were and what might come next....Brilliantly funny and wry."
—Booklist
"Pitch-perfect, undeniably real, and, most important, achingly funny, Rogers deftly reminds us that after wiping away tears and even burying the dead, a good antidote to the violent, poignant, and completely absurd place that Zimbabwe has become is to throw arms wide to the undaunted African sky and simply laugh."
—Wendy Kann, author of Casting with a Fragile Thread: A Story of Sisters and sAfrica
"Travelogue, adventure yarn, political intrigue, tragedy, and high-wire journalism, The Last Resort is a love story about the author and his homeland, Zimbabwe. She is by turns ineffably beautiful, unspeakably hideous, insanely rich, desperately poor, democratic, brutally autocratic, violent, corrupt, and dysfunctional, even though, in person, her people seem to be, one and all, hardscrabble heroes and survivors. Rogers tries to leave her and doesn't even want to write about her, but, in the end, her charms are irresistible. He can't help himself and neither can we."
—Richard Dooling, author of White Man's Grave
"With breathtaking talent, wry wit, and abundant heart, Douglas Rogers tells the compulsively readable tale of his parents' daily struggles to hold on to their land in the nightmarish landscape of present-day Zimbabwe. With every turn of the page, you fear for the Rogerses' survival, as well as the survival of the country they love so much. But even as they face the most difficult of challenges, their indomitable spirit shines through, revealing the ordinary heroism of people in extraordinary circumstances."
—Anne Landsman, author of The Rowing Lesson
| BN ID: | 2940176079531 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Tantor Audio |
| Publication date: | 10/26/2021 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
One
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Last Resort"
by .
Copyright © 2010 Douglas Rogers.
Excerpted by permission of Crown/Archetype.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
