HearingBooks

BUY DIGITAL BUY PHYSICAL

"Scribbling The Cat" by Alexandra Fuller Length: 9 hours and 21 min. ISBN: Listen to an excerpt with:     Windows Media Player     Real Player

Scribbling The Cat’s subtitle is “Travels with an African Soldier” and it’s an unusual book. Unusual in the sense that it doesn’t chronicle the life of a great warrior, nor a well-known war, nor even a well-known part of the world. Instead it deals with the life of a soldier losing, and then struggling to regain, his humanity.

Partly autobiographical, Scribbling The Cat tells the tale of K, a white Rhodesian (now Zimbabwe) soldier who joined the army in the late teens. Now in his fifties, K is still struggling to come to grips with his past: the brutality of war; the many attrocities he witnessed and occasionally participated in; his alcohol abuse eventually leading to his wife to divorce him, etc. K finds God and a certain measure of peace but it all comes back when he and Fuller visit his old friends and the sites where he fought.

This book is sometimes hard to read. Fuller doesn’t censor K as he describes some of the things he’s done. In other parts it can be a little slow. Fuller does convey K’s anguish at his past, how he copes with it now, and the fragile peace K has found within himself through religion. Though the book focuses on just a tiny part of Africa’s history, the picture it paints evokes the pain the continent continues to suffer due to poverty, oppression, and self-centered leaders.

Lisette Lecat’s narration is wonderful. Her measured voice brings Fuller’s beautiful prose to life and her accents add authenticity to the story. Close your eyes and you could be right there with K and Fuller in Africa.

Tags: scribbling the cat, alexandra fuller, africa, history, nonfiction, audiobook, rhodesia, zimbabwe