Informazioni su questo prodotto

Product Identifiers

PublisherPenguin Publishing Group

ISBN-100143035010

ISBN-139780143035015

eBay Product ID (ePID)45025198

Product Key Features

Book TitleScribbling the Cat : Travels with an African Soldier

Number of Pages272 Pages

LanguageEnglish

TopicSociology / General, Africa / South / General, Personal Memoirs, Military / Wars & Conflicts (Other), Africa / South

Publication Year2005

GenreTravel, Social Science, Biography & Autobiography, History

AuthorAlexandra Fuller

FormatUk-B Format Paperback

Dimensions

Item Height0.6 in

Item Weight8.4 Oz

Item Length8.2 in

Item Width5 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade

Dewey Edition22

Reviews"Searing, at times intoxicating prose... striking, intimately revealing..." - The Washington Post " Scribbling the Cat defies easy definition . . . [a] wild-hearted beauty of a book." - O, The Oprah Magazine "[ Scribbling the Cat ] is no more a simple profile of an ex-soldier than Fuller''s first book, the acclaimed bestseller Don''t Let''s Go to the Dogs Tonight , was merely a memoir of growing up.... The story catches fire." - Newsweek, "Searing, at times intoxicating prose... striking, intimately revealing..." -- The Washington Post " Scribbling the Cat defies easy definition . . . [a] wild-hearted beauty of a book." -- O, The Oprah Magazine "[ Scribbling the Cat ] is no more a simple profile of an ex-soldier than Fuller's first book, the acclaimed bestseller Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight , was merely a memoir of growing up.... The story catches fire." -- Newsweek, "Searing, at times intoxicating prose... striking, intimately revealing..."-- The Washington Post " Scribbling the Cat defies easy definition . . . [a] wild-hearted beauty of a book."-- O, The Oprah Magazine "[ Scribbling the Cat ] is no more a simple profile of an ex-soldier than Fuller's first book, the acclaimed bestseller Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight , was merely a memoir of growing up.... The story catches fire."-- Newsweek, Searing, at times intoxicating prose . . . striking, intimately revealing . . . ( The Washington Post ) Scribbling the Cat defies easy definition . . . [a] wild-hearted beauty of a book. ( O, The Oprah Magazine ), "Searing, at times intoxicating prose... striking, intimately revealing..." - The Washington Post " Scribbling the Cat defies easy definition . . . [a] wild-hearted beauty of a book." - O, The Oprah Magazine "[ Scribbling the Cat ] is no more a simple profile of an ex-soldier than Fuller's first book, the acclaimed bestseller Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight , was merely a memoir of growing up.... The story catches fire." - Newsweek, Searing, at times intoxicating prose . . . striking, intimately revealing . . . (The Washington Post) Scribbling the Catdefies easy definition . . . [a] wild-hearted beauty of a book. (O, The Oprah Magazine)

Grade FromTwelfth Grade

Grade ToUP

Dewey Decimal968.9404/2

SynopsisWhen 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.