Through the Darkness: a Life in Zimbabwe.

• Author: McClellan, Lucy
• Position: Brief article - Book review

THROUGH THE DARKNESS: A LIFE IN ZIMBABWE

Judith Garfield Todd

(Cape Town: Zebra Press, 2007), 472 pages.

Judith Todd's account of Zimbabwe's tragic post-colonial turmoil and the lawless rule of Robert Mugabe is a thorough, on-the-ground examination of the Zimbabwean nationalist movement and the many competing interests of the independence era. The subject matter is fascinating and Todd, as the director of the Zimbabwe Project Trust and the daughter of Mugabe-appointed senator Sir Garfield Todd, holds impeccable credentials as both a political insider and a witness to the corruption and cruelty of the period.

Her storytelling, however, suffers from the bloated style of one whose intimate involvement in the events portrayed deprives her of the ability to leave out distracting details. By giving nearly equal narrative weight to both major and obscure characters and events, she sometimes drops the thread of her otherwise profound account of Zimbabwe's political and human tragedy in the minutiae of ordinary activities.

While at times the book is a bit over-detailed, those with...