The Zanzibar Chest: A Memoir of Love and War

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Note: Due to Coronavirus Restrictions collections are by appointment only and therefore cannot be facilitated during an auction at this time. I found this book to be absolutely riveting. Hartley has actually related two tales here, one detailing his quest to shed some light on the circumstances surrounding the death of his father's friend Peter Davey; the other tale relates Hartley's own story from his education abroad to his misadventures as a foreign/war correspondent for the Reuters news agency. Genizah expert S.D. Goitein, author in 1983 of the multi-volume A Mediterranean Society, had this to say about dower chests in that region: Britain was known as “home.” Yet for us, it was a distant island, where after all these years it was still raining. It was almost entirely through BBC radio that we kept in touch with an idea of England, which was cleansed by the frequencies of short wave and my parents’ vaguely remembered sense of patriotism. England greeted us each dawn with the BBC World Service signature tune, “Lero Lero, Lilli burlero.” Wherever we were, Big Ben tolled the hour and Dad, doing his yoga while drinking his early morning tea, gazed out at our adopted landscape, at a rising desert sun, or at the fishermen punting their outrigger canoes into the surf.

Ironically, Hartley's best writing on Somalia describes an atrocity he didn't see. In 1992, US troops landed in Mogadishu to quell the chaos, and Hartley, thinking the story over, bailed out. But the Americans' brutal policies united Somalis against them. After helicopter gunships demolished a Mogadishu house, killing dozens of women and children, a vengeful mob killed four journalists, including three Reuters men. Hartley returned to Somalia to investigate and wrote a precise and moving account of the killings. Live telephone bids will incur a 3% (+VAT) surcharge on every successful bid. Live Internet and Telephone Bids are subject to a “failure to communicate”, it is better to be in the room or leave an absentee bid. We suggest a covering bid amount on all telephone bids as a precaution The basic form of most of these chests is large and rectangular. Usually they are flat on top (though some are curved), so that they could be used as a bench or small table; sometimes they were built with drawers below the main compartment and, often, there was a smaller compartment inside the lid for holding valuables. In his quest for belonging, Hartley intertwines his own war stories with the tale of Peter Davey, a romantic young British officer and friend of his father, who was murdered in Aden in 1947 and whose diaries he finds in his dead father's Zanzibar chest. There are similarities between Davey and Hartley, two white men in savage lands. But Hartley strives for a more poetic connection. He believes Davey's death represented his father's loss of innocence, just as he himself was transformed by Africa's wars. By uncovering the details of Davey's life, he hopes to connect with his father, and so with his forefathers.Hartley’s strength as a writer is his reporter’s eye for brutal detail and his ability to fashion blunt anecdotes from the unfinished business of recent history.”—Ken Foster, The San Francisco Chronicle Lots Road Auctions offer an online bidding service via www.the_saleroom.com for bidders who cannot attend the sale. The majority of Africa went from being ruled by Europe and the people being treated like shit, to being ruled by dictators who the people either elected or who took over via a coup, and treated the people like shit. And when those leaders were toppled a new madman dictator took their place, to loot the country and treat the people like shit. This is why there are certainly no easy answers to fixing Africa, if in fact there is a fix. Truly 5 stars. Such a beautiful, interesting, absorbing book, hard to believe that it didn't win every possible medal/prize for Non-Fiction. I know why it didn't--because it unflinchingly tells the truth about the UN and USA, the UK and their actions in Africa.

Aidan's work is of a brilliance of writing that few can claim. His book almost comes across as a psychoanalytic journey, with lucidity and dreamlike states mixed in with an attempt at finding a common thread from the past to the present to understand his own manhood, and what this means in the context of his genealogy. Insurance:The Auctioneers will insure lots at the lower end of their pre-sale estimate or initial agreed reserve, whichever is the greater value, if the items have not been sold. Hannam’s Auctioneers Ltd will not be responsible for loss or damage to the exterior features of Paintings (frames or glass), Prints or Watercolours, or for loss or damage to any property caused by temperature change, handing errors or humidity changes.

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Where a member of the public causes damage to a Lot (or part thereof) the Auctioneer reserves the right to sell the aforementioned without reserve and to hold that specific individual liable for the amount of any difference between the hammer price and the reserve or lower estimate whichever might be higher or a) For the cost of the restoration where appropriate or b) The full amount of the reserve price or the lower estimate whichever be the higher. Hartley uses crisp, to-the-point prose threaded with delicious, dark humor and a sense of the absurd that reaches its height as he details the bungled U.N. intervention in Somalia. His accounts of bloodshed and corruption are all the more effective for his refusal to sugarcoat it. . . . In the end, one can only stand as witness, and Hartley is an eloquent one.”—Claudia La Rocco, Associated Press Hartley has been to all the worst places and seen the worst horrors, he’s excellent with facts, and he wants to know whether history has not played a huge joke on colonizers and colonized alike.”— National Geographic Adventure