Peter Godwin - The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe

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Peter Godwins latest book is the most powerful indictment of Robert Mugabes regime yet written, marking out the author as one of the sharpest observers of modern Africa. He is tough but sympathetic, aghast at the horror yet still hopeful that Africas resilient, long-suffering people will somehow win through against the gangsters led by Mr. Mugabe.

The Economist, Best Books of the Year

The Fear is utterly fearless. It twists in the hurricane winds of a country gone mad. Incredibly vivid and haunting.

James Zug, Boston Globe

Following on his compelling and moving memoirs, Peter Godwins The Fear is a personal journey through the country he grew up in. At no small risk to himself, Godwin traveled widely in Zimbabwe to see the torture bases, the opposition leaders, and the last white farmers. Told with Godwins brilliant eye for character and natural storytelling gifts, this dark story of corruption and violence is populated by extraordinary people.

Philip Kerr, Newsweek

The difference between learning of these events in the occasional news report and reading about them in Peter Godwins mesmerizing The Fear is like the difference between receiving a valentine and having someone deliver a still beating and bleeding heart to your doorstep. Godwin is a skilled storyteller and scene setter, with a novelists knack for selecting the detail that paints the whole. When a writer with such powers sets out to break your heart, you had best be prepared to have it broken. But The Fear is far more than a catalog of human rights violations and tragedy, in no small part due to the astonishing courage and determination of the Zimbabweans Godwin interviewed. Even those left cold by the usual run of inspirational literature will find these stories stirring.

Laura Miller, Salon

Peter Godwins most recent book, The Fear, updates the continuing story of popular resistance. If you want a catalog of Mugabes sins, turn to Godwins books. But dont read them just for outrage at the terrible offense to humanity. They also describe a new sort of Zimbabwean, emancipated from racial and tribal feeling by a long common struggle against a man who doesnt scruple to employ racial and tribal demagoguery.

Christopher Hitchens, Slate

The Fear is a gut-wrenching portrait of Mugabes enormous political sadismand the brave, heartbreaking, nearly superhuman resistance to it. In the hands of a less talented writer, The Fear could have become simply too painful to read. But while Godwin spares us nothing, he writes with such compassion, poetry, and ironic humor that you cannot put his book down. The Fear is a visceral masterpiece. Its illuminating, infuriating, and informative. And its implications extend far beyond Zimbabweto the northern end of the continent and beyond, where similar struggles are being waged against other tyrannical dictators. The Fear is as important a book as we can read right now. It makes each and every one of us witness.

Susan Jane Gilman, NPR, All Things Considered

Highbrow, brilliant.

New York

The Fear is not only extraordinary journalism; it is also a refutation of Mugabes big idea: that race determines everything. Godwin goes on to produce the most comprehensive account yet of the brutality that followed the 2008 general election. Godwins reporting uncovers a paradoxical hope. By impoverishing all Zimbabweans, Mugabe forged a tentative unity among them, whatever their color. A true Zimbabwean like Roy Bennettlike Godwin himselftranscends race.

Alex Perry, Time

What stands out from Godwins gripping narrative is not just the scale of death and destruction that Mugabe is willing to inflict on his country for the sake of staying in power, but the extraordinary courage of Zimbabweans who defy his tyranny, knowing full well the consequences of doing so.

Martin Meredith, Washington Post

The Fear is an urgent and essential book: a stunning account of a dictators determination to destroy his people, and of his peoples refusal to be destroyed. Peter Godwin is one of those people, and this, his third superb memoir, is both a record of Zimbabwes defiance and an expression of it. Written in the teeth of devastation and despair, without recourse to sentimentality or false hope, it is a heroic account of political heroismand it makes for relentlessly gripping reading.

Philip Gourevitch, author of We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families

The Fear is an important book, not least because Mr. Godwin names namesof rapists, torturers, and killersand one hopes that they get whats coming to them. In cataloging the victims, he shows the extraordinary courage of those standing up to Mr. Mugabe.

Douglas Rogers, Wall Street Journal

A poignant, heartbreaking tour of his former home.

G. Pascal Zachary, San Francisco Chronicle

Given Godwins steady gaze back toward his home country over the past decade and a half, it is tempting to categorize The Fear as a sequel to his memoirs, but this work is too uncompromising and fierce for that. In order to write truthfully, an author has to riskcourt, eveneviction from his or her tribe. In The Fear, Godwin recognizes the shelter of his own whiteness, and as a result he is able to see and write about the limitations of his own viewpoint with disarming and illuminating frankness. The result is his most powerful work to date. Godwin gives the rest of the world a reason to act. He argues that justice is not only possible in Zimbabwe, it is essential.

Alexandra Fuller, Harpers

Personal, well-informed, and at times, heart-racing. Godwins skills as a journalist and his personal connection to Zimbabwe combine to create an astonishing piece of reportage marked by spare, stirring description, heartrending action, and smart analysis.

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Peter Godwins passionate and courageous memoir catalogs Zimbabwes descent into horror with such vivid detail that the squeamish reader would do well to look away now. It comprehensively catalogs the evidence of the depths of depravity to which Mugabes goons have descended in their drug-and alcohol-fueled rampage against a citizenry whose only crime has been to indicate a desire for change. But this is not just a book about the savagery of Mugabes goons. It is a testament to the courage and resilience of my fellow countrymen and women. Godwins heroes refuse to back down. Again and again they find ways to resist. This remarkable courage runs a thread of hope through the book.