Hartley, an acclaimed frontline reporter who covered the atrocities of 1990s Africa, embarks on a journey to unlock the mysteries and secrets of his own family's 150-year-colonial legacy in Africa. A beautiful, sometimes harrowing memoir of intrepid young men cut down in their prime, of forbidden love and its fatal consequences, and of family and history. and the collision of cultures over the enduring course of British colonialism in Africa that defined them both.

The Zanzibar Chest: A Memoir of Love and War

Hartley, Aidan

Biographies & Memoirs

Atlantic Monthly Press

London. 20 cm. XII, 446 p. : ill., ports. Encuadernación en tapa blanda de editorial ilustrada. Idioma Inglés. Originally published: London: HarperCollins, 2003 .. Este libro es de segunda mano y tiene o puede tener marcas y señales de su anterior propietario. ISBN: 9780006531210 (pbk.); 0006531210 (pbk.)

The Zanzibar Chest : A Memoir of Love and War

History

Africa

Harper-perennial

Five years ago, after the senseless murder of his closest friend in Nairobi, Aidan Hartley packed up his bags and headed for the hills with his wife and young daughter. They bought a vast tract of dry land in Laikipia in Northern Kenya, with no fences, no phones, and no company other than the errant witchdoctor who cursed the dust of Aidan's footsteps, and set out to build a farm from scratch. But it wasn't long before Aidan discovered that his patch of wilderness was full of life: not just the farmhands spending their wages on drink, weddings and funerals, but a whole procession of curious neighbours, intriguing locals, and occasional run-ins with leopards and elephants. Although Aidan grew up on a farm in Tanzania and thought he had farming in his blood, nothing prepared him for how hard rural life would be.But with the help of the locals, the farm developed, and all three of the family proved to have far more to learn from their neighbours than they'd ever expected. "Wild Life" story is a remarkable book, by turns heartbreaking and wonderfully funny.

Wild Life: Adventures on an African Farm

William Heinemann

From the author of the international bestseller The Zanzibar Chest comes the irresistible story of his adventures and misadventures setting up a farm in Kenya.Five years ago, Aidan Hartley decided to take the plunge and follow a dream he had been nursing since childhood: with his wife Claire, and daughter, Eve, he packed up his bags and headed off to Laikipia in Northern Kenya where he would buy a vast tract of dry land with no fences, no phones — and no company, at first, beyond the errant witchdoctor who cursed the dust of his footsteps. As Aidan and his young family struggled to build a farm from scratch, they had run-ins with leopards, cobras and their new neighbours. They drank a great deal and he crashed the car in the mud miles from anywhere. Claire had a miscarriage and then nearly lost their son before he was born on a long, dusty race to the hospital on Mt. Kenya. Aidan grew up on a farm in Tanzania and thought he had farming in his blood, but nothing prepared him for his enormous struggles. Starting literally with nothing, he learned more than he ever imagined he would from the Africans who helped him along the way: men like Fundi Kariuki, a mason, carpenter, plumber and electrician who can construct a perfect 12 metre chimney that won’t smoke a house.Wild Life is structured in seasons, as life is lived on the farm. It is an extraordinary book, sometimes heartbreaking and sometimes hilariously funny with the playfulness of Alexander McCall Smith and the distinctive punch of Alexandra Fuller, and guaranteed to make you think twice about giving up everything for the rural life.

Wild Life

Combining literary reportage, memoir, family history, and a quest to piece together a decades-old mystery, The Zanzibar Chest is a moving examination of colonialism and its consequences. In his final days, Aidan Hartley’s father said to him, We should have never come.” Those words spoke of a colonial legacy that stretched back through four generations of one British family. From a great-great-grandfather who defended British settlements in nineteenth-century New Zealand, to his father, a colonial officer sent to Africa in the 1920s and who later returned to raise a family therethese were intrepid men who traveled to exotic lands to conquer, build, and bear witness. And there is Aidan, who becomes a journalist covering Africa in the 1990s, a decade marked by terror and genocide. After encountering the violence in Somalia, Uganda, and Rwanda, Aidan retreats to his family’s house in Kenya where he discovers the Zanzibar chest his father left him. Intricately hand-carved, the chest contained the diaries of his father’s best friend, Peter Davey, an Englishman who had died under obscure circumstances five decades before. With the papers as his guide, Hartley embarked on a journey not only to unlock the secrets of Davey’s life, but his own.

The Zanzibar Chest: A Story of Life, Love, and Death in Foreign Lands

Community & Culture

GROVE PRESS

An epic narrative of the journalist who worked in Africa in the 1990s describes his childhood as the son of a British colonial officer; his witness to genocidal activities in Ethiopia, Somalia, Rwanda, and the Congo; and his discovery of a missing family friend's journals. 35,000 first printing.

Historical

Atlantic Monthly Pr

Food – how it’s grown, how it’s shared – makes us who we are. This issue traces the connections between farm and food, between humus and human. According to the first book of the Bible, tending the earth was humankind’s first task: “The Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed” (Gen. 2:8). The desire to get one’s hands dirty raising one’s own food, then, doesn’t just come from modern romanticism, but is built into human nature. The title, “The Welcome Table,” comes from a spiritual first sung by enslaved African-Americans. The song refers to the Bible’s closing scene, the wedding feast of the Lamb described in the Book of Revelation, to which every race, tribe, and tongue are invited – a divine pledge of a day of freedom and freely shared plenty, of earth renewed and humanity restored. In the case of food, the symbol is the substance. Every meal, if shared generously and with radical hospitality, is already now a taste of the feast to come. Also in this issue: poetry by Luci Shaw; reviews of books by Julia Child, Robert Farrar Capon, Peter Mayle, Albert Woodfox, and Maria von Trapp; and art by Michael Naples, Sieger Köder, Carl Juste, André Chung, Ángel Bracho, Winslow Homer, Raymond Logan, Sybil Andrews, Cameron Davidson, and Jason Landsel. Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to put their faith into action. Each issue brings you in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art to help you put Jesus’ message into practice and find common cause with others.

Plough Quarterly No. 20 - The Welcome Table (Plough Quarterly, 20)

RUDEN, SARAH

Danticat, Edwidge

Shaw, Luci

Wirzba, Norman

Britts, Philip

Lee, Uk-Bae

Genovise, Elizabeth

Larison, Daniel

Libresco, Leah

Meier, Johannes

Joyner, Richard

High, Ellesa Clay

Oliver, Claudio

Peters, Jane Sloan

Religion & Spirituality

Plough Publishing House

Hartley, an acclaimed frontline reporter who covered the atrocities of 1990s Africa, embarks on a journey to unlock the mysteries and secrets of his own family's 150-year-colonial legacy in Africa. A beautiful, sometimes harrowing memoir of intrepid young men cut down in their prime, of forbidden love and its fatal consequences, and of family and history. and the collision of cultures over the enduring course of British colonialism in Africa that defined them both.

The Zanzibar Chest

Riverhead Books

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