Scribbling the Cat
Travels with an African Soldier
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Scribbling the Cat
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Narrated by:
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Lisette Lecat
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By:
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Alexandra Fuller
About this listen
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 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. 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.
©2004 Alexandra Fuller (P)2004 Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
Critic reviews
"Fuller evokes place and character with the vivid prose that distinguished her unflinching memoir of growing up in Africa." ( Publishers Weekly)
What listeners say about Scribbling the Cat
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 23-05-19
Moving, enlightening and resonating
I found this to be a truly wonderful book, which should a light on forgotten survivors of the Rhodesian Bush War/Chimurenga
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Tom Wall
- 17-07-24
Gripping
I started this audio book and could not get going. After a while,couple of months, I thought no, give it another go. We'll the story gripped me and I couldn't stop listening. Soldiers, hondo(war) and life. The after effects. I was too young by a year in Rhodesia to do national service. I was always destined to be in the military. Started National Service down south and eventually joined regular force. Doing 23 years service. Best times.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Charmagne Walters
- 19-11-24
Great descriptions of Africa
Couldn’t help but feel there wasn’t a point to the story… like the author wanted to share the horrors of war and the tragedies suffered by everyone but couldn’t quite understand why she spent time with this man at all?
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Amanda
- 05-07-15
As an ex-Rhodie, both Northern and Southern ....
Would you listen to Scribbling the Cat again? Why?
I will not listen to it again for a long time as the journey was too emotional.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Scribbling the Cat?
I have seen the hand wiping motion of face cleaning a thousand times and never before did it impinge on my mind so clearly as "being a gesture from Africa".
What does Lisette Lecat bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?
This lady did a remarkable job of getting most of the accents, names, slang words, etc. pronounced correctly. It was not an easy book to read and her good performance contributed to my enjoyment. Congratulations.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
The smells of Africa are pungent and memorable and brought to mind my memory of the smell just after the first rains when "suicide" month comes to an end with those first rains.
Any additional comments?
As a "scatterling" of Africa I realise that many things are deliberately or sub-consciously blocked from my memory as I need to get on with living in the present. This book broke down those barriers and it is going to take a while for me to build them up again.
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4 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Richie P
- 02-08-20
Perceptive, moving, real.
Of particular interest to those who were Rhodesian and became Zimbabwean. Horrifying in detail and depth. The pointlessness of war and the lifelong effects are laid bare in this extraordinary account. Africa at its raw and primeval best and worst.
Moved to tears.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Nicky Ramone
- 07-07-19
A story about people unapologetically on the wrong side of the war
I guess this was aimed at white Zimbabweans who still consider themselves Rhodesians. I am not one of those, though I lived in Zim for over ten years, never knowing very many white people, mainly because the mostly hang out on their own society. I have lived in Mozambique for longer than I did in Zimbabwe. The casual racism of the book is honest, as some (white) people really do speak like that. It is difficult to listen to, however, so that I felt little sympathy for the battle-scarred ‘heroes’ (or ‘anti-heroes’). I know I would not like these characters if I met them in real life, nor the author either. I listened to the end, mainly because I have spent years in most of the places in the book, but I wished I hadn’t bothered and wished I hadn’t given the author my money.
I wished the narrator had not had the posh voice she does, but she certainly put a lot of effort into the job at hand, generally had good pronunciation of the African words and places, though I felt she represented African voices embarrassingly. This book would have been unbearable though if it were not for the variation in tone, her very good narration of dialogue and good pacing. I hope she was as offended as I was however by some of what she had to read.
I think the author made a big mistake in glorifying some of the men and their behaviour.... none of these people could imagine an African person being their equal.
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1 person found this helpful