Interesting story of a white Kenyan who strings for Reuters in the 70s & 80s

Three stories: the authors’s work, the life of his father and of his father’s best friend, all of whom led outsized lives in Africa. For me, a very good read

Aidan Hartley grew up in Kenya and Tanzania, the son of British settlers. His deep love for Africa led him to return there after completing university in England. In the first part of the book, we relive his pleasant boyhood memories, then we are brutally catapulted into his years as a war journalist for Reuters News. Hartley lived to get "the story" . He relates his experiences in war-torn Somalia and Rwanda where he witnessed post-colonial interference, corruption, tribal warfare and famine. He questions, in the end, whether he should have done more to help along the way, even perhaps adopt a starving orphan. It is a fast-paced and riveting memoir, though I admit to scanning some horrific passages. Anyone who wants to improve their understanding of the complex political tragedy that is Africa would do well to read it - but brace yourself.

This was a fantastic book, though I must admit parts of it are very tough to get through- more on that later. It is also really multiple stories combined into one book.
1. The title refers to a chest his father had with diaries and journals detailing his fathers work during the last 30 some years of British colonial rule in Africa and Yemen.
2. The book details the author's quest to travel to Yemen and learn as much as possible and see the location that make up his fathers friend's journal, and to learn how and why he died.
3. The author was a front line reporter who covered what happened in Somalia starting in 1990.
4. The author was front line reporting from the beginning on the genocide that took place in Rwanda.
It is # 3 and 4 that make this book a tough read, and the author himself says what he reported and has written for the book do even begin to convey the horrors he witnessed.
The majority of Africa went from being ruled by Europe and the people being treated like shit, to being ruled by dictators who the people either elected or who took over via a coup, and treated the people like shit. And when those leaders were toppled a new madman dictator took their place, to loot the country and treat the people like shit. This is why there are certainly no easy answers to fixing Africa, if in fact there is a fix.
What I liked about the author's perspective is that it wasn't sermonizing, it wasn't pointing the finger at just one group and saying Them, they are 5he reason the country is a mess. Everyone associated with the countries of Africa are to blame.
By the end of the book it is clear the author is suffering severe PTSD, but as this came out 12 years ago that tag wasn't used to label his condition.
If you want an introduction to the atrocities committed in Somalia and Rwanda, if you want an introduction to the good as well as the bad that the British contributed to Africa and Yemen, if you want a history lesson and an adventure, or if you want to be exposed to the pure evil the human race is capable of, read The Zanzibar Chest.

The bloody legacy of colonial adventurers fill this memoire of a white Kenyan journalist who takes the reader with him to the famine, wars, and genocide he reported from Ethiopia, Somalia, Burundi and Rwanda. The book seeks to weave this more contemporary story with that of Peter Davey, a friend of his father, who was murdered in Aden in 1947 and whose diaries he finds in his dead father's Zanzibar chest. The stories do relate as they reveal the impact of adrenaline addicted adventurers profiting from the African continent in different ways.

We see this when he meets up with someone who was there just after the Rwandan genocide the author saw closer up, “And so we talked over our pints in front of his fire and we agreed that the hardest part of reentry to a humdrum life was not recovering from the bad stuff. It was missing the good times, the friendship, intensity, fear, sense of purpose, the sheer exotic escapism of it all.”

As the book ends, the author is raising a family in the African hills, not unlike the life he was born into. Yet, I am haunted by his father’s refrain as he is dying in Africa, “we never should have come here.”

While this book wasn’t what I was expecting, I want to declare right at the outset that it was REALLY REALLY GOOD! The author, Aidan Hartley, is a journalist and The Zanzibar Chest is his memoir of his childhood, being born and raised in Tanzania, and also the years of his 20′s and 30′s, when he was war correspondent in Africa. The son of a British military colonial, Aidan’s family had a rich history of living the ex-pat life. Weaving in tales of his father’s life in Africa, Aidan Hartley narrates a scene of beauty, love, fear and loss.

At night, lions grunted and roared and the hollow volcanic hill rumbled as rhino cantered by … “We were in a paradise,” said my father, “that we can never forget, nor equal.”

As the book progresses, the reader is a fly on the wall, observing the life of a young journalist.

“I remember how an American dropped his trousers for a group of us at the bar and boasted how he’d lost his left testicle in a Balkans mine blast, which he claimed hadn’t prevented him from seducing a nurse during his recovery in a Budapest hospital.”

As Hartley finds himself in the midst of war-torn Somalia, Serbia and Rwanda, his writing becomes darker and eventually he cannot distance himself from the horror.

“They say we journalists ignored the story for months. We were there all the time. What’s true is that we didn’t understand at the time the full magnitude of what was happening. I was an ant walking over the rough hide of an elephant. I had no idea of the scale of what I was witnessing.”

I highly, highly recommend this superb memoir. 4 1/2 stars.

A book that is part biography and part autobiography. A tale of old colonial life in Yemen and East Africa, and the impact on the family, including the ties to the land and its people; for better and for worse as colonial life departs and Africa falls to greed, terror and intolerance. Graphic insight into Somalia/Rwanda and other conflicts as well as first hand account of the waste and ineffective input 'dogooders' of the UN which probably did more harm than good.

Great read. Descriptive power that sucks you into the vacuum at the heart of wars and genocides that were overlooked by the West at the time. His analysis born of his experience is more acute than most I've read.

I tried desperately to enjoy this book but found it so scattered and hard to follow. I gave up about 1/4 of the way through.

So many recommendations for this book. Very disappointing and hard to read. I guess I expected too much. Having lived in East Africa for nearly 30 years I could empathize with a lot of author's observations. But the wars, the battles, the ugly life he led, so passionate and debauched. I kept waiting for insights, depth, understanding, revelations, something uplifting, but got a steady stream of disjointed scenes, encounters, thoughts and back glances to his father, family and Peter Davey. Maybe he should have waited a bit longer to digest all his experiences before writing this chronicle.

4.5 stars. Review to follow.

I usually finish a book in a week or two but this book took me MONTHS because it is a book you have to digest.

Zanzibar chest is one of the most profound books I've read, and it boggles the mind that the events described on the pages all happened to one individual. Hartley's stark descriptions of war, massacres, and the overall cruelty of mankind contrasted with his obvious love for Africa and the people make for an almost indescribable book.

Hartley is a talent you see only once or twice in a generation; his ability to weave his own story like a ribbon, braided amongst the many stories of his father, his father's best friend and the many correspondents and photographers he worked with through the years creates a tapestry that shows how history is made, and not only how it is made, but how it is captured and shared.

The Zanzibar chest isn't a book that everyone can read, but it is an important document of our time, and the events that shaped the moments that lead to where we are now.

In theory I should have loved this book, but I really struggled to connect with it.

The chapters discussing Hartley's first-hand accounts as a foreign correspondent in Somalia (1991) and Rwanda (1994) were the highlight for me.