Part 2, ‘Peace’, recounts the author’s painful adjustment to life as a civilian—a fifteen-year odyssey in the embryonic state of Zimbabwe. It is an intensely personal journey in which the author pulls no punches as he describes his clumsy attempts to come to terms with a) the new dispensation of black Africa and b) himself. It is a cri de couer, the story of a young man, brutalized by war, who seeks escape in alcohol and drugs, and who, in the process, causes immeasurable pain and suffering to those around him. These too are the casualties of war. Ultimately, though, it is a story of hope, of a man’s triumph over his own demons.

 

Chris Cocks

Hardcover 278pp