by Christina Lamb
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Product Description
Blue mountains, golden fields, gin and tonics on the terrace--once it had seemed the most idyllic place on earth. But by August 2002, Marondera, in eastern Zimbabwe, had been turned into a bloody battleground, the center of a violent campaign. One bright morning, Nigel Hough, one of the few remaining white farmers, received the news he had been dreading. A crowd of war veterans was at his gates, demanding he hand over his homestead. The mob started a fire and dragged him to an outhouse. To his shock, the leader of the invaders was his family’s much-loved nanny Aqui. “Get out or we’ll kill you,” she said. “There is no place for whites in this country.”
Christina Lamb uncovered the astonishing saga she tells in House of Stone while traveling back and forth to report clandestinely on Zimbabwe. Her powerful narrative traces the history of the brutal civil war, independence, and the Mugabe years, all through the lives of two people on opposing sides. Although born within a few miles of each other, their experience growing up could not have been more different. While Nigel played cricket and piloted his own plane, Aqui grew up in a mud hut, sleeping on the floor with her brothers and sisters. “They had cars and went shopping in South Africa. We didn’t have food and had to walk an hour each way to fetch water,” she remembers.
House of Stone (“dzimba dza mabwe” or “Zimbabwe” in Shona) is based on a remarkable series of interviews with this white farmer and black nanny, set against the backdrop of the last British colony to become independent, and the descent into madness of Robert Mugabe, one of Africa’s most respected nationalist leaders.
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Average Customer Review:
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
The horrors of a post-colonial dictatorship, 2008-12-03
I re-read this book recently as the news from Zimbabwe continues to get worse and worse -- and as I write this, a cholera epidemic has gripped the country.
Christina Lamb has done readers a great service by telling the story of Zimbabwe's recent history through the eyes of two individuals, the African maid Aqui, who once dreamed of becoming a nurse and now struggles to feed her family, and Nigel, a white farmer whose family once employed Aqui as a nurse. Only by looking at the complete collapse of the country from both perspectives can the outsider begin to understand the ways in which the swings of history have led to the current dire situation. Like South Africa, the country formerly known as Rhodesia was governed by whites, with black Africans largely disenfranchised. The farms -- the backbone of the economy -- were owned by wealthy white families. Unlike South Africa, however, armed insurrection led by Robert Mugabe and others contributed heavily to the demise of Ian Smith's regime and the arrival of majority rule in the 1970s.
But within what looked like a triumph for democracy and human rights lay the seeds of the current conflict, which has caught both blacks and whites in a cycle of violence and death. Majority rule didn't change the balance of economic power -- white families still controled the economy. Ultimately, frustration on the part of black Africans desperate for some land played into the hands of megalomaniac Mugabe, who, in a blatant attempt to distract his constituents from his own corruption and mismanagement, encouraged "veterans" of the independence wars to seize the farms from their previous owners. That was often only accomplished with violence, and many white Zimbabweans fled. (I do know some of these individuals.) Nigel has hung on, however, and Lamb explores his determination to hang on to his family's heritage even as Aqui struggles to build some kind of life for her own family.
It's the inability of the Zimbabwean regime to even begin to accomodate both of these sets of interests that is at the heart of Lamb's narrative. Nigel is seeking security; Aqui, opportunity. Meanwhile, both -- and the groups they represent in Zimbabwe -- are being manipulated cynically by Mugabe's regime. The tragedy is that the history of inequities under first the white regime of Ian Smith and now the black regime of Mugabe has produced the current state of affairs, one where Nigel the farmer can finally acknowledge his racist attitudes -- even as Aqui reacts to decades of suppression by becoming "racist" in her turn and telling her former employer to leave his farm or the occupying force of 'veterans' she has joined will kill him and his family. "There is no place for whites in this country."
Lamb is to be commended for having tackled such a difficult topic in an even-handed manner, and for persisting in reporting this tale, a dangerous thing to do in a country that has banned foreign reporters and has a track record of complete suppression of local media. (One television reporter was abducted and murdered last year after shooting footage of an opposition leader emerging from hospital after a beating.)
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 House of Stone, 2008-04-19
This is a controversial book where the writers' bias comes through in several places as a given authoritative view. Many readers will not pick up on this bias if they do not have a Southern African or indeed Rhodesian/Zimbabwe background. The story is a depressing one, but well written and one is drawn to the end of the book as the inevitable tragedy of Zimbabwe unfolds as seen through the 'eyes' of 2 individuals caught up in its inexorable decline and torment.
10 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
 More Apologetics For Bloody Dictators, 2007-12-05
Christina Lamb, a member of the current "elite", thinks she is ever so correct to suggest that Ian Smith's UDI government was the moral equivalent of the Pyongyang-trained butcher who now reigns in Harare.
I have nothing but contempt for that position.
Millions of Africans have starved to death. Tens of Millions are starving. And the Rhodesia that previously fed itself and its neighbors has collapsed into the ruins of Zimbabwe. Like a bad joke. But the deaths of so many innocents is not funny.
"But she showed both sides" one might argue. "Bovine Scatology," I would retort. The Rhodesian People--black, white, and brown--are paying a terrible price for the UN's treachery and de facto capitulation to Communist aggression by the craven leaders of the West.
One look at the countries of Africa now ruled by the leaders trained in the USSR, PRC, and DPRK should be enough for people of good character to shout "ENOUGH!" and do something. Instead, we see the insipid and intellectually-dishonest moral equivalence of the Lambs, the so-called "journalistic professionals".
More like Goebbels than Greeley, in my opinion. How many more will die before Mugabe is put down?
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
 Great reading, 2007-12-04
I found this book while browsing for another one and I have to say, it is fantastic!! I couldn't stop reading, I had to continue chapter after chapter. It is a shocking story about the rise of Mugabe, told from two different point of views, a black girl and on the other side a white boy, both growing up in their worlds in Zimbabwe.
This book makes great reading and is shocking at the same time. A must read for anyone concerned about racism and the african history/colonialism. I can highle recommend this book!!!!
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
House of Stone, 2007-10-27
I enjoyed reading the Rhodesian story from both the black and white african perspective. I thought this was a well written book from beginning to end. As a white ex-Rhodesian, I find the story terribly sad and look at what has happened to this beautiful country a crime to both black and white africans. Mugabe has a lot to answer for and will go down in history as one of Africa's great criminals together with Idi Amin. It's a shame someone hasn't had the courage to make him disappear.
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