Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier
by Fuller, Alexandra
- Used
- Paperback
- first
- Condition
- Good+
- ISBN 10
- 0143035010
- ISBN 13
- 9780143035015
- Seller
-
Decatur, Georgia, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
256pp. paperback 8vo: near Very Good [is uniformly age browned in the usual Penguin manner; else a nice clean, complete & tight copy] Southern African travel and memoir.
Synopsis
When Alexandra ("Bo") Fuller was home in Zambia a few years ago, visiting her parents for Christmas, she asked her father about a nearby banana farmer who was known for being a "tough bugger." Her father's response was a warning to steer clear of him; he told Bo: "Curiosity scribbled the cat." Nonetheless, Fuller began her strange friendship with the man she calls K, a white African and veteran of the Rhodesian war. With the same fiercely beautiful prose that won her acclaim for Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight , Fuller here recounts her friendship with K. K is, seemingly, a man of contradictions: tattooed, battle scarred, and weathered by farm work, he is a lion of a man, feral and bulletproof. Yet he is also a born-again Christian, given to weeping when he recollects his failed romantic life, and more than anything else welling up inside with memories of battle. For his war, like all wars, was a brutal one, marked by racial strife, jungle battles, unimaginable tortures, and the murdering of innocent civilians—and K, like all the veterans of the war, has blood on his hands. Driven by K's memories, Fuller and K decide to enter the heart of darkness in the most literal way—by traveling from Zambia through Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) and Mozambique to visit the scenes of the war and to meet other veterans. It is a strange journey into the past, one marked at once by somber reflections and odd humor and featuring characters such as Mapenga, a fellow veteran who lives with his pet lion on a little island in the middle of a lake and is known to cope with his personal demons by refusing to speak for days on end. What results from Fuller's journey is a remarkably unbiased and unsentimental glimpse of men who have killed, mutilated, tortured, and scrambled to survive during wartime and who now must attempt to live with their past and live past their sins. In these men, too, we get a glimpse of life in Africa, a land that besets its creatures with pests, plagues, and natural disasters, making the people there at once more hardened and more vulnerable than elsewhere. Scribbling the Cat is an engrossing and haunting look at war, Africa, and the lines of sanity.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Auldfarran Books, IOBA
(US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 25166
- Title
- Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier
- Author
- Fuller, Alexandra
- Format/Binding
- Paperback
- Book Condition
- Used - Good+
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- 1st ed. thus
- ISBN 10
- 0143035010
- ISBN 13
- 9780143035015
- Publisher
- Penguin
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 2005
- Pages
- 256
- Keywords
- AFRICA MEMOIR AFRICAN TRAVEL RHODESIA ZIMBABWE ZAMBIA
- Bookseller catalogs
- Africa;
Terms of Sale
Auldfarran Books, IOBA
We accept all the usual credit cards via the Biblio site and will hold books for customers' checks or money orders in U.S. funds. Shipping via 4th class mail in the USA is usually only $4.89, depending on the weight of the package. Fast priority mail (often 2-3 days) is at least $15 depending on weight. Any other service, including all international shipments and invoiced library purchase orders, is priced at packing & postage cost. We will invoice libraries providing purchase orders. We must charge Georgia residents 8 percent state sales tax on all subtotals (including shipping). Customer satisfaction with their books is always guaranteed. Returns are accepted with advance notification. For overseas customers we ship only via the Biblio Export program which requires surface mail to the American export center. Books will be shipped via air from there. Do not request expedited shipping for this program.
About the Seller
Auldfarran Books, IOBA
Biblio member since 2005
Decatur, Georgia
About Auldfarran Books, IOBA
"I have spent many delightful hours poring over the . . . lists of second-hand booksellers. . . . All these are redolent of romance. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written." -W. Somerset Maugham. Auldfarran Books, whose name is taken from an antique Anglo-Scots word meaning "having the sagacity of age," or "wise beyond one's years," is a professional antiquarian and secondhand bookseller (since 1993), and member of the International Association of Online Booksellers, dedicated to the ancient proposition that reading is good for you and, to that end, the enhancement of readers' and collectors' libraries (and even the development of libraries' libraries). Whether you're a voracious, moderate or casual reader, or even if you believe (in the words of Anthony Burgess) "there's no better reason for not reading a book than owning it," we encourage your inquiries and special search requests. E-mail is the best way to get in touch with us.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Tight
- Used to mean that the binding of a book has not been overly loosened by frequent use.
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