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Praise for Mukiwa:

“Time and time again in his uncanny ability to evoke the sensations and secret observations of childhood I was reminded of the young Kipling.”

—Trevor Royle, Scotland on Sunday

“A remarkable memoir.”

—Time

“I have no hesitation in saying that Mr. Godwin’s book is a classic.”

—Anthony Daniels, The Sunday Telegraph

“It makes you laugh even while you’re weeping.”

—Fiammatta Rocco, The Literary Review

“Mukiwa ... is an antiheroic memoir. It is filled with what one is in the habit of calling adventure: narrow escapes, a harrowing return in disguise ... a last-minute flight from certain arrest and imprisonment. But these episodes can be called adventures only if they’re stripped of their private meaning, and that, fortunately, Godwin is unable to do; the book lacks the roistering jingoism. . . that is necessary to such stories. Instead, it chronicles the development of a kind of internal exile ... a relocation of allegiance, for which Godwin’s ‘adventures’ are the external signposts. The tone throughout the book—muted, graciously sad—is the consequence of a liberal mind discovering its own inutility. . . . What’s special is the sense one gets ... of a conscience that tries to resist coarsening and does not forgive its own failures.”

—Verlyn Klinkenborg, The New Yorker

“A beautiful, painful, and subtle memoir.”

—The Economist

“The book demonstrates the vivid readability and the magpie’s eye for a telling detail that make him an exceptional journalist.”

—Hugo Barnacle, The Independent

“This book is superb: a tragic song of lament for the land of our youth.”

—Graham Lord, The Daily Telegraph

“This fine and powerful memoir is a marvelous contribution (to the literature of Africa).”

—William Boyd, The Sunday Times

“Mukiwa . . . speaks directly to the heart about the hope of childhood and the gradual extinguishing of that hope. It also speaks of something else: The beauty and dignity of the human spirit as it suffers and survives.”

—The Jerusalem Post

“A searing and brilliant piece of writing, a lasting literary and personal achievement ... If you read only one book about that place and time, make it Mukiwa, by Peter Godwin.”

—Shaun Johnson, The Sunday Independent (Johannesburg)

“A very good book, the best to come out of the war for independence in Zimbabwe. Its strength is its balance and the width of experience of the author who had many black friends, was a liberal, brought up by liberal parents, and then had to fight in a war he hated.”

—Doris Lessing, The Observer

“The insanity of war, the beauty and mystery of Africa, the chaotic death pangs of colonialism, an extraordinary coming of age: All swirl hauntingly together. ... A fervid blend of My Traitor’s Heart, Dispatches, and Heart of Darkness, Godwin’s account ranks with some of the finest war reportage of this century.”

— Kirkus Reviews

“Forget about the breast-beating confessions by people who have grown up under apartheid or neighboring forms of racist colonialism. Peter Godwin’s book is, at last, a totally unsentimental, honest testimony—written without fear of who, white or black, might be shocked—of the conflict, confusion and compromises. . . . Godwin’s account belongs not only to the history of Zimbabwe and the African continent. It is part of the truth about the era of colonialism and its consequences that must be pieced together, now, in the history of this, the century for which we are all, in one way or another, responsible.”

—Nadine Gordimer