Hartley has written something of a memoir of himself and his family. Truth be told, his family history is quite interesting, filled with individuals occupying important roles in Britain's colonial history. Hartley himself, who was born and grew up in East Africa, became a journalist and the book is like personal therapy to come to terms with the the death of his father and the violence he was faced with while working in (mostly) African warzones.

The book is interesting, but not nearly as good as the quotes and reviews printed on the cover of the book would have you believe. Then again, since the book is clearly a journalist's memoir, that probably is the exact reason why editors and journalists loved the book. They see themselves, or a version of themselves they never were.
Hartley's section on Rwanda is shocking in its descriptions, but also describes nothing not said in other works.

Conflicted on this. CONs I didn't particularly care for one of the 2 stories written about his dad's friend . And the author can come off sometimes as not recognizing the privilege he has in many of his stories. I thought he did better as the story goes on. PROs- I found his stories on Somalia and Rwanda truly interesting and learned some history. I also enjoyed his descriptions of places I've personally been, 15-20 years later.

All in all, glad I read it but not what I expected.

The author delivers a book that will stay with me long after the last page is turned. One quarter travelogue, another family history and the other half memoirs the author shows us Africa in all it's brutality and sadness. Not what I was expecting but an essential read to remind us what we should not forget.

An exceptional and captivating read!

Whatever everyone else sees in this book to grant it such a high rating is beyond me. A great story, but it's lacking in good writing, reflection and depth, not to mention an ability to connect (though that part could just be me).

A classic!

I picked this up at NBO airport on my way to Zanzibar, having heard a few good things about it. The first disappointment was that it was not about Zanzibar, which could have been avoided if I'd found out a little more about the book before sitting down with it on the beach. I didn't love it.

This is really two books in one, which is what I've averaged together for three stars (I think I'd like to give it 2.5 but won't). I didn't think the two halves really meshed well together. The most important, for which the book is known, is the author's shared experiences from his time as a Reuters correspondent covering east and central Africa largely in the 1990s (I'll come back to this). The other of the two is an entirely pretentious, self-absorbed recounting of the author's/his circle's privileged life, likely written out of some need to prove himself to his parents or the like. The first 75 pages outlining his colonial pedigree kind of made me want to vomit. From there he goes into what I found to be a rather disjointed recounting of the life of one Peter Davey, a former (colonial) mate of his father's whose journals from his life in Arabia had fallen into the author's hands.

The author's stories of his time covering African news makers, mainly Somalia and Rwanda, was very interesting, not just for the historical insight into these now nearly forgotten news stories but also for trying to understand the psyche of the type of person who is attracted to these environments (something I think about a lot working in peacekeeping). I enjoyed these segments of the book. The other part of the book, retracing the steps and recounting the exploits of his father's friend in the Arabian peninsula sixty years later, didn't really appeal to me either in subject or in the way that it alternated chapter for chapter with the author's own stories. The Arabian stories were interesting, but perhaps just not my cup of tea and not what I was expecting to find in this book. I didn't really see the common thread.

In closing, I would recommend that anyone looking for an account of a foreign correspondent's African experiences read Kapuscinski's "The Shadow of the Sun" instead (though it is more historical in its perspective).

Most of the book takes place in Africa (war-torn Somalia, famine-stricken Ethiopia, the blood bath of Rwanda’s genocide, post-independence socialist Tanzania, etc), but he spends some time developing the story of his father’s career in service of the crown. I get the feeling that his father was unlike the stereotypical colonialist. From the stories, he was a man who effortlessly integrated with the local people and strove to understand their traditions, speak their languages, and help them solve their problems. Apparently, during an assignment on the Arabian peninsula, his father realized his true love was Africa, its people, and its wonders. Aidan, too, came to love Africa.

I could identify with Aidan who, although his white skin essentially gave him a leg up on life, seemed only to want to shun his privilege and be one of the locals. I think I know the feeling, because I was more excited when I met some "fellow" Kenyans recently in Rwanda than when I bumped into some American chicks. I felt proud to speak some Kiswahili, Kikamba, and have some laughs about good times in Kenya.

Honest

Hartley greatly portrayed the scope of Africa from an objective point of view. During the first part of the book, it seems as though Hartley is "gushing" about his family's historic ties with Africa, especially his fathers. However, readers will come to realize that his father greatly impacted Africa in the mid 20th century by creating agricultural improvements for Africans.
Aiden Hartley's early years were taken up in London where he constantly felt he did not fit in properly with other kids. I felt as though he was in a way neglected by his father and longed to be closer with his father throughout his story. With that being stated, Hartley decides he wants to relive his fathers past experience in Africa by becoming a journalist. From witnessing brutality and inhumane conditions from Somalia to Rwanda, Hartley's narrative is thoroughly descriptive. There are particular passages that are almost difficult to take in. However, after comprehending what Hartley witnessed and later reported, it clearly indicates how much western civilized countries do not know about Africa. Hence, this book was a thoroughly dense scope on modern Africa from an objective standpoint. It not only encompasses a journalists point of view, but also that of love, loss, and death in Africa.

This is a story for someone who may need to experience stress vicariously through someone else. Don't laugh -- we all need to do this once in a while. Especially if you are someone like me who needs a certain degree of ground beneath my feet (routine, apartment with things in place, a general sense of security, etc.) but who also craves a healthy amount of chaos and edginess in life. I need this fix at least once a year and Hartley gave me a fair share. Not to mention that I read this while living in Kenya, which brought the whole story more close to home.

This is a book about a journalist who, luck or fate would have it, is swept into the most tumultuous events of East Africa in the 90s. He experienced Somalia during the most heated of conflicts (Blackhawk Down tries to capture this), and he walked across the wet, green hills of Rwanda during what are arguably the most maddening 100 days in all of human history.

Admittedly, he writes Zanzibar chest as an attempt at catharsis. He wants to rid himself of the demons only a witness of such atrocities could harbor. The bonus for the reader is that you get this raw and well-written account of what it was like to be the witness. And it's laced with Hartley's family history as well -- a British expat father who never did understand the point of colonizing other people's land so much as getting to know and love the people themselves, and an uncle who marries into the Muslim religion only to come under threat of death by his colonizing comrads.

It's hard to imagine anyone weaving this all together coherently. And actually, I don't think it's a book with a story line so much as many story lines grabbing and tugging at your emotions and imagination until you begin to sense how someone could become as tortured as the author became, just by being a witness.

Utterly absorbing. This book tells two stories. The first is Hartley's family history, in particular the story of Peter Davey, a friend of Hartley's dad who 'goes native' in Yemen while working to maintain peace amongst the Sheikhs who live in a rapidly changing world. The second story is that of Hartley's own experiences (at times devastating) working as a foreign news correspondent for Reuters.

At all times, Hartley writes with a raw honesty about not just the horrors he witnesses, but his feelings and reactions to those events. Often, he has Schindleresque moments of 'I could have done more to help'. Other times, he shares his dad's feelings that the British should never have gone into Africa in the first place, yet having colonised, should never have then left. This constant honesty and self-reflection is refreshing.

Ultimately, what makes the book so appealing is its poetic prose. Despite the fact that he describes unimaginable horrors in graphic detail, Hartley writes with a lyricism that can make it all feel almost romantic. Hartley laments a lost Africa, a continent so ravaged by war and colonialism that whole cultures were wiped out, entire ways of life confined to history, whole people's uprooted from a way of life that was developed organically over thousands of years and forcibly thrown into a new life of mundane modernity. In his own words (albeit writing about Arabia, yet the sentiment is much the same): "The nomads who lived in this harsh land wove no moral message into the landscape. Their drama was survival, which can seem mean... but when you see a nomad transformed into a settled creature, his Land Cruiser parked outside his concrete bungalow, which has metal girders sticking vertically up from the roof in case he can one day afford to build another floor, you have to wonder about what happened to the beauty of Arabia." Hartley cares deeply for the continent he calls home and regrets what the 20th century did to it.

Whether in war-torn Somalia, trekking through rebel-held Ethiopia or witnessing inhumane depravity in Rwanda, Hartley is always on the ground, in the thick of it and unsparing in his storytelling. This was easily one of the most moving, informative, entertaining and beautiful books I have read in a long time. I recommended it heartily.