From Publishers Weekly
Toward the end of this mesmerizing chronicle, Hartley writes simply of Rwanda, "Like everything in Africa, the truth [is] somewhere in between." Hartley appreciates this complexity, mining the accounts that constitute his book not for the palliative but for the redemptive. Born in 1965 in Kenya into a long lineage of African colonialists, Hartley feels, like his father whose story he also traces, a magnetic, almost inexplicable pull to remain in Africa. Hartley's father imports modernity to the continent (promoting irrigation systems and sophisticated husbandry); later, Hartley himself "exports" Africa as a foreign correspondent for Reuters. Both men struggle to find moral imperatives as "foreigners" native to a continent still emerging from colonialism. Hartley's father concludes, "We should never have come here," and Hartley himself appears understandably beleaguered by the horrors he witnesses (and which he describes impressively) covering Ethiopia, Somalia and Rwanda. Emotionally shattered by the genocide in the latter ("Rwanda sits like a tumour leaking poison into the back of my head"), the journalist returns to his family home in Kenya, where he happens upon the diary of Peter Davey, his father's best friend, in the chest of the book's title. Hartley travels to the Arabian Peninsula to trace Davey's mysterious death in 1947, a story he weaves into the rest of his narrative. The account of Davey, while the least engaging portion of the book, provides Hartley with a perspective for grappling with the legacy that haunts him. This book is a sweeping, poetic homage to Africa, a continent made vivid by Hartley's capable, stunning prose. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Hartley, a journalist and British subject with four generations of colonial administrators in the family, offers a startlingly refreshing perspective on the political, social, and cultural impact of British colonialism in Africa and Arabia. The son of a foreign service officer, Hartley was raised in East Africa and educated in British prep schools. As a journalist, he traveled the war circuit through Rwanda, Ethiopia, Somalia, Bosnia, and other hot spots. Drawing on his personal experience of colonial legacy--his family being more comfortable fighting and dying in the colonies than living in Mother England--and his contemporary journalistic perspectives on war and conflict, Hartley details a fascinating odyssey that reflects on the past, present, and future of colonialism. He criticizes the policies of the UN and the U.S. in many of the world's trouble spots, putting a contemporary face on historic colonialism with an accuracy and veracity seldom seen in Western critiques. Vernon Ford
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Kirkus Reviews
"Engaging.... These accounts...seethe with shocking and grisly consequences.... [Hartley’s] native’s perspective on African affairs enhances the narrative."


Rian Malan, author of My Traitor’s Heart
"An extraordinary and heartbreaking book, the finest account of a war correspondent's psychic wracking since Michael Herr's Dispatches."


Aminatta Forna, author of The Devil that Danced on the Water
"Reportage, history, family memoir and personal testimony intertwine in a work of passion and intensity…that is impossible to forget."


Jim Harrison, author of Off to the Side
"A stunning piece of work. There is an amazing depth, breadth and grace of fine writing."


Bob Shacochis, author of The Immaculate Invasion
"[Aidan Hartley is] an outrageously brave and anguished heart disgorging the never-inert legacies of colonialism."


Book Description
An epic narrative combining the literary reportage of Ryzard Kapuscinski with a historical love story reminiscent of Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient In his final days, rising from a bed made of mountain cedar, lashed with thongs of rawhide from an oryx shot many years before, Aidan Hartley’s father says to him, "We should have never come." Those words spoke of a colonial legacy that stretched back over 150 years through four generations of one British family. From great-great-grandfather William Temple, who was awarded the Victoria Cross for his role in defending British settlements in nineteenth century New Zealand, to his father, a colonial officer sent to Africa in the 1920s, building dams and irrigation projects in Arabia in the 1940s, then returning to Africa to raise a family—these were intrepid men who traveled to exotic lands to conquer, to build, and finally to bear witness. For finally there is Aidan, who becomes a journalist covering Africa in the 1990s. Weaving together stories, his family’s history, and his childhood in Africa, Aidan tells us what he saw. After the end of the Cold War, there seemed to be new hope for Africa but again and again—in Ethiopia, in Somalia, Rwanda, and the Congo, the terror and genocide prevailed. In Somalia, three of Aidan’s close friends are torn to pieces by an angry mob. Then, after walking overland from Uganda with the rebel army, Aidan is witness to the terrible atrocities in Rwanda, appearing at the sites and interviewing survivors days after the massacres. Finally, burnt out from a decade of horror, Aidan retreats to his family’s house in Kenya where he discovers the Zanzibar chest his father left him. Intricately hand-carved and smelling of camphor, the chest contained the diaries of his father’s best friend, Peter Davey, an Englishman who died under mysterious circumstances over fifty years ago. Tucking the papers under his arm, Hartley embarked on a journey to southern Arabia in an effort not only to unlock the secrets of Davey’s life, but of his own. He travels to the remote mountains and deserts of southern Arabia where his father served as a British officer. He begins to piece together the disparate elements of Davey’s story, a man who fell in love with an Arabian princess and converted to Islam, but ultimately had to pay an exacting price. The Zanzibar Chest is an enthralling narrative of men and women meddling with, embracing, and ultimately being transformed by other cultures—one of the most important examinations of colonialism ever written.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"In his final days, rising from a bed made of mountain cedar, lashed with thongs of rawhide from an oryx shot many years before, Aidan Hartley's father says to him, "We should have never come." Those words spoke of a colonial legacy that stretched back over 150 years through four generations of one British family. From great-great-grandfather William Temple, who was awarded the Victoria Cross for his role in defending British settlements in nineteenth-century New Zealand, to his father, a colonial officer sent to Africa in the 1920s, building dams and irrigation projects in Arabia in the 1940s, then returning to Africa to raise a family - these were intrepid men who traveled to exotic lands to conquer, to build, and to bear witness. Finally there is Aidan, who becomes a journalist covering Africa in the 1990s. Weaving together stories of his childhood in Africa, his family's history, and his experiences as a reporter, Aidan tells us what he saw." After the end of the Cold War, there seemed to be new hope for Africa but again and again - in Ethiopia, in Somalia, Rwanda, and the Congo, the terror and genocide prevailed. In Somalia, three of Aidan's close friends were torn to pieces by an angry mob. Then, after walking overland from Uganda with the rebel army, Aidan was witness to the terrible atrocities in Rwanda, appearing at the sites and interviewing survivors days after the massacres. Finally, burnt out from a decade of horror, Aidan retreated to his family's house in Kenya where he discovered the Zanzibar chest his father left him. Intricately hand-carved and smelling of camphor, the chest contained the diaries of his father's best friend, Peter Davey, an Englishman who died under mysterious circumstances over fifty years earlier. Tucking the papers under his arm, Hartley embarked on a journey to southern Arabia in an effort not only to unlock the secrets of Davey's life, but of his own. He traveled to the remote mountains and deserts of southern Arabia wher

SYNOPSIS

An epic narrative combining the literary reportage of Ryzard Kapuscinski with a historical love story reminiscent of Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient.

FROM THE CRITICS

The New York Times

Mr. Hartley writes with powerful detail of the pillaging of Mogadishu by the anti-Barre rebels. He writes of subsequent perilous daily sorties he made with his fellow Africa veterans. The Big Feet (star reporters) arrived of course, but they were never big enough to pick their way, unaided, through a quicksand.

He writes the horrors along with the sharpest of vignettes. At a Somali checkpoint armed tribesmen demand the clan affiliations of those seeking passage. One man is pulled out and shot. "He should have borrowed the ancestors of a friend," a Somali remarks. — Richard Eder

The Los Angeles Times

In The Zanzibar Chest, Hartley has given us an unusually personal account of what it looks and smells and feels like to venture time and again into the belly of the beast. — Bill Berkeley

The Washington Post

This account of the author's time as a foreign correspondent in Africa in the late 1980s and early 1990s is a strange, mesmerizing, painfully honest book: part hilarious and part horrifying, part memoir and part journalism-cum-history, part mockery and part celebration. It paints a brilliant portrait, fond but candid, of the "hacks" who chase dramatic stories in exotic and scary places -- "the good times, the friendship, intensity, fear, sense of purpose, the sheer exotic escapism of it all" -- but declines at all turns to lapse into sentimentality. — Jonathan Yardley

Publishers Weekly

Toward the end of this mesmerizing chronicle, Hartley writes simply of Rwanda, "Like everything in Africa, the truth [is] somewhere in between." Hartley appreciates this complexity, mining the accounts that constitute his book not for the palliative but for the redemptive. Born in 1965 in Kenya into a long lineage of African colonialists, Hartley feels, like his father whose story he also traces, a magnetic, almost inexplicable pull to remain in Africa. Hartley's father imports modernity to the continent (promoting irrigation systems and sophisticated husbandry); later, Hartley himself "exports" Africa as a foreign correspondent for Reuters. Both men struggle to find moral imperatives as "foreigners" native to a continent still emerging from colonialism. Hartley's father concludes, "We should never have come here," and Hartley himself appears understandably beleaguered by the horrors he witnesses (and which he describes impressively) covering Ethiopia, Somalia and Rwanda. Emotionally shattered by the genocide in the latter ("Rwanda sits like a tumour leaking poison into the back of my head"), the journalist returns to his family home in Kenya, where he happens upon the diary of Peter Davey, his father's best friend, in the chest of the book's title. Hartley travels to the Arabian Peninsula to trace Davey's mysterious death in 1947, a story he weaves into the rest of his narrative. The account of Davey, while the least engaging portion of the book, provides Hartley with a perspective for grappling with the legacy that haunts him. This book is a sweeping, poetic homage to Africa, a continent made vivid by Hartley's capable, stunning prose. B&w photos not seen by PW. (July) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Weary of the atrocities he has witnessed over the last decade, the African-born Hartley revives when he discovers an elaborately carved chest containing the diaries of his father's best friend, who fell in love with an Arabian princess. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information. Read all 6 "From The Critics" >

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Aidan Hartley's The Zanzibar Chest is a stunning piece of work. There is an amazing depth, breadth and grace of fine writing in this book. It will reside permanently in my memory. No one should dare say the word 'Africa' without reading it. — (Jim Harrison, author of Off to the Side)

Hieronymous Bosch reincarnated as a frontline correspondent invited to the midnight banquet of Africa's bloody horrors, that's who Aidan Hartley seems to be, an outrageously brave and anguished heart disgorging the never-inert legacies of colonialism. — (Bob Shacochis, author of The Immaculate Invasion)

This is an extraordinary and heartbreaking book, the finest account of a war correspondent's psychic wracking since Michael Herr's Dispatches, and the best white writing from Africa in many, many years. — (Rian Malan, author of My Traitor's Heart)

A work of tremendous candour and vigour. Passionately articulated, The Zanzibar Chest offers a vision of Africa through the eyes of the war reporter that is unsettling, compelling and moving by turns. Reportage, history, family memoir and personal testimony intertwine in a work of passion and intensity to create a book that is impossible to forget. — (Aminatta Forna, author of The Devil that Danced on the Water)