Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight
Alexandra "Bobo" Fuller grows up on failing farms across Rhodesia, Malawi, and Zambia in the 1970s and 80s while her British settler parents drink, fight, and refuse to leave Africa. Her mother Nicola is bipolar and brilliant, her father Tim is taciturn and steady, and two of Bobo's siblings die before the book opens. The Rhodesian Bush War rages around the homestead, with Bobo and her sister Vanessa carrying loaded rifles to the latrine. Fuller's 2001 debut won her the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize and a permanent place in the African childhood-memoir canon.
What you might want to know about Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A British-settler daughter grows up on failing farms across war-era Rhodesia, Malawi, and Zambia, where her bipolar mother and the bush war shape every chapter of her childhood.
Yes. Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight is Alexandra Fuller's 2001 memoir about her childhood in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Malawi, and Zambia during the wars of African independence. It established her career as a memoirist.
Yes. Alexandra Fuller has written several follow-up memoirs, including Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness and Leaving Before the Rains Come, which continue the family story.
Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight was written by Alexandra Fuller, published in 2001 by Penguin Random House.
Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight is 318 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight is a standalone novel by Alexandra Fuller, not part of a series.
Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.