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Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier
by Fuller, Alexandra
- Used
- good
- first
- Condition
- Good/Good
- ISBN 10
- 1594200165
- ISBN 13
- 9781594200168
- Seller
-
Olympia, Washington, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
The Penguin Press, 2004-05-03. Library Binding. Good/Good. Thank you for supporting Last Word Books and independent bookstores. First edition. First printing. Full number line and/or stated 1st edition. Hard cover with DJ. Good condition. Light to moderate shelf wear to boards and DJ. Clean, tight binding. Thank you for supporting Last Word Books and independent bookstores.
Synopsis
When Alexandra ("Bo") Fuller was home in Zambia a few years ago, visiting her parents for Christmas, she asked her father about a nearby banana farmer who was known for being a "tough bugger." Her father's response was a warning to steer clear of him; he told Bo: "Curiosity scribbled the cat." Nonetheless, Fuller began her strange friendship with the man she calls K, a white African and veteran of the Rhodesian war. With the same fiercely beautiful prose that won her acclaim for Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight , Fuller here recounts her friendship with K. K is, seemingly, a man of contradictions: tattooed, battle scarred, and weathered by farm work, he is a lion of a man, feral and bulletproof. Yet he is also a born-again Christian, given to weeping when he recollects his failed romantic life, and more than anything else welling up inside with memories of battle. For his war, like all wars, was a brutal one, marked by racial strife, jungle battles, unimaginable tortures, and the murdering of innocent civilians—and K, like all the veterans of the war, has blood on his hands. Driven by K's memories, Fuller and K decide to enter the heart of darkness in the most literal way—by traveling from Zambia through Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) and Mozambique to visit the scenes of the war and to meet other veterans. It is a strange journey into the past, one marked at once by somber reflections and odd humor and featuring characters such as Mapenga, a fellow veteran who lives with his pet lion on a little island in the middle of a lake and is known to cope with his personal demons by refusing to speak for days on end. What results from Fuller's journey is a remarkably unbiased and unsentimental glimpse of men who have killed, mutilated, tortured, and scrambled to survive during wartime and who now must attempt to live with their past and live past their sins. In these men, too, we get a glimpse of life in Africa, a land that besets its creatures with pests, plagues, and natural disasters, making the people there at once more hardened and more vulnerable than elsewhere. Scribbling the Cat is an engrossing and haunting look at war, Africa, and the lines of sanity.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Last Word Books
(US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 201223052
- Title
- Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier
- Author
- Fuller, Alexandra
- Format/Binding
- Library Binding
- Book Condition
- Used - Good
- Jacket Condition
- Good
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Binding
- Unknown
- ISBN 10
- 1594200165
- ISBN 13
- 9781594200168
- Publisher
- The Penguin Press
- Place of Publication
- New York, New York, U.s.a.
- Date Published
- 2004-05-03
- X weight
- 16 oz
Terms of Sale
Last Word Books
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About the Seller
Last Word Books
Biblio member since 2010
Olympia, Washington
About Last Word Books
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Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Number Line
- A series of numbers appearing on the copyright page of a book, where the lowest number generally indicates the printing of that...
- First Edition
- In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
- Library Binding
- A type of reinforced binding designed for libraries, schools, or other applications where a book might experience high...
- Tight
- Used to mean that the binding of a book has not been overly loosened by frequent use.
- Shelf Wear
- Shelf wear (shelfwear) describes damage caused over time to a book by placing and removing a book from a shelf. This damage is...
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