Before the Knife. Memories of an African Childhood

(London: Doubleday, 2002) 0385603444. 8vo; original grey boards, lettered in silver gilt on spine; laminated pictorial dustwrapper; pp. (xii) + 254. Boards very slighly bumped; faint foxing to top edge. Very good condition. "What happened to me affected all of us - my mother, my father, my sisters and me: we all fell apart under the horror of it, and we all tried to pretend that there was no horror. Here, in her own words, prize-winning novelist Carolyn Slaughter tells the story of a family that destroyed itself from within, and of the ways she found to overcome terrors no child should have to bear. Growing up in a remote British protectorate (now Botswana) in the heart of the Kalahari Desert, Carolyn was inspired by the stark beauty of her childhood home. All too soon, this magnificent and isolated landscape would become a refuge for a six-year-old girl with nowhere to turn. Neither her mother, doomed by depression and guilt, nor her sister could shield her from the most terrible of violations. In the end, she would learn not only how to survive, but how to save her own soul. In prose unforgettable for its lyric beauty and subtle irony, Before the Knife offers us powerful lessons about survival, and about the triumph of love over hate." .