Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa

This autobiography is the story of Peter Godwin, who grew up in Rhodesia in the 1960s, aware, but only dimly, of the divisions that would lead to civil war. His childhood was spent among African children who could never be his friends, and white adults who were beginning to perceive the anachronism that their late colonial lifestyle represented. Guerilla killings began, and Peter began to get used to violent death. Conscripted into the army at 17, he was commanding units of 100 Africans fighting guerillas in the bush.

The author shares his experiences as a white child growing up in an African colony rapidly collapsing into chaos, in a memoir of Africa seen through the eyes of a child as a magical, frightening place and then through the haunted eyes of an adolescent soldier