Zimbabwean police have arrested New York Times correspondent Barry Bearak, who was covering last week’s still-unresolved national election. And you could hardly find better to guide to understanding how it could have happened Peter Godwin’s memoir the terrors of Robert Mugabe’s 28-year reign in Zimbabwe, When a Crocodile Eats the Sun (Back Bay, 386 pp., $14.99) www.hachettebookgroupusa.com, just out in paperback. Godwin refracts the brutality of the Mugabe years through the lens of tragedies that struck his family and friends and, in doing so, sheds light on many facts that have appeared in the news this week, including that Zimbabwe has a 100,000 percent annual inflation rate. That’s right, 100,000 percent.
© 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.
