Ten years ago, Zimbabwean expat Alex颅andra Fuller burst onto the literary scene with Don鈥檛 Let鈥檚 Go to the Dogs Tonight, a memoir about growing up the child of white settlers in the former Rhodesia. This month Fuller, 42, who now lives in Wyoming, publishes a sequel, Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness (Penguin Press, $25.95). We caught up with her as the book went to press.
Your most recent book, The Legend of Colton H. Bryant, was set in Wyoming. Now you鈥檙e returning to Africa. What brought you back?
My mum was furious when Don鈥檛 Let鈥檚 Go to the Dogs Tonight was published. I thought it was a love story about Africa and my mother. She did not. What hurt her were the reviews that depicted us as nothing but a hardscrabble, poverty-stricken family. None of them mentioned how well-bred the family was. My mother is like George W. Bush when it comes to family politics: you鈥檙e either with her or against her. Having decided I was against her, she imposed sanctions. She wouldn鈥檛 pick up the phone for months.
In Cocktail Hour, she can鈥檛 even say the title. She calls it 鈥渢hat awful book.鈥
After Dogs came out, she said, 鈥淵ou don鈥檛 know a thing about me.鈥 So I decided to find out. We met in Scotland. I taped hours and hours of interviews.
Cocktail Hour is a memoir of your mother鈥檚 life told through your eyes. She鈥檚 an incredible survivor, kind of the last of the British stiff-upper-lippers.
If you choose to make Africa your home, then you鈥檇 bloody well better have a stiff upper lip. The culture of Central Africa doesn鈥檛 tolerate wallowing in grief. My mother lost three of her five children, but there were people around her who lost five.
She and your father are now living on a farm in Zambia?
Yes. Whenever I call, there are elephants in the bananas or a crocodile has eaten one of the sheep. The drama never ceases.