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Scribbling the Cat

3.66 of 5 stars 3.66 · rating details · 2,164 ratings · 263 reviews

When Alexandra "Bo" Fuller was in Zambia a few years ago visiting her parents, she asked her father about a nearby banana farmer who was known as being a "tough bugger." Her father's response was a warning to steer clear of him: "Curiosity scibbled the cat, " he told her. Nonetheless, Fuller began her strange friendhip with the man she calls K, a white African and veteran...more

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Published by Picador USA (first published January 1st 2004)

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Dec 03, 2011 Sue rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: africa, zambia, mozambique, non-fiction, zimbabwe

The author grew up in Zimbabwe while it was still Rhodesia, during the war. After the war, the family moved on from there. She is now living in the States with family; her parents remain in Zambia. The story opens with her traveling to Zambia to spend Christmas with her parents. During her visit she meets a farmer identified only as K. He was a member of a Special Forces group during the war. Alexandra makes a couple more trips to Zambia over the next couple years and, on one of those occasions...more

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Sep 18, 2012 Babak Fakhamzadeh rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: travel-literature, sub-saharan-africa

Fuller's second book is like an 80s hair band's second single, having strong links to the first, riding the wave of former glory.
The cover of the book reminds of the first, as does the title, as does the layout, chapters interspersed with small images of life in south east Africa.

Fuller's first book detailed her growing up in Rhodesia during that country's civil war. This second book sees her going back and going on a road trip with a former soldier now living close to her parents' farm in Zam...more

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Sep 28, 2011 Stacy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Most writers are unable to clearly see a book through from start to finish. Most writers forget to continue the descriptive prose that keeps the reader in the moment. Most writers cannot separate their personal lives from their writers lives. Most writers are not A. Fuller.
It was difficult for me not to read a few "reviews" about this book before I began. I am usually not one to need another's opinion before I read as it seems to throw paint on my blank canvas. I need a very blank canvas when b...more

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Mar 30, 2011 Dianne rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, history, autobiography

Alexandra Fuller accompanies a Rhodesian war veteran K on a journey from the Zambian/Zimbabwe border through Zimbabwe to Mozambique revisiting scenes of the war in an attempt to excorcise some of K's demons. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars have made the general public aware of serious psychological problems which may affect veterans, a so-called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. K knows that he was messed up until he found God, but he accepts this therapeutic journey during which they visit other ve...more

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Feb 02, 2011 Christie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Fuller was born in England and moved, with her family, to Rhodesia when she was 3. Here’s an even more interesting fact: Fuller received her B.A. from Acadia University. Since I live next door to Nova Scotia - I feel a certain kinship to her now; she’s an honorary Maritimer!

Scribbling the Cat is Fuller’s story of ‘K’, a man she meets on a trip back to Zambia to visit her parents who still live and work there. Fuller has left her husband and two children behind in the States. She does a wonderful...more

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Nov 18, 2010 Alison rated it 4 of 5 stars

Alexandra Fuller is a white African who grew up during the Rhodesian War. She goes on a road trip with a charismatic but haunted veteran of the war, retracing his steps and confronting his demons. While you can't help questioning the author's sanity for taking this journey with someone who clearly has a screw loose, it is a close up look at atrocities that have occurred in that part of the world. And while you want to dislike the racist white Africans that you encounter throughout the book, Full...more

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Feb 21, 2010 Kirsty rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

On a visit to her parent’s farm in Zambia, Zimbabwean author Alexandra Fuller encounters the enigmatic K, a crazed, battle-scarred veteran of the Rhodesian war and a devout born-again Christian. “Curiosity scribbled the cat,” warns Alexandra’s father as she attempts to find out more about the ex-soldier and the brutal war that shaped her childhood. She ignores his advice and, fascinated with K, she leaves her comfortable life in America, to travel with him through the battlefields of the Rhodesi...more On a visit to her parent’s farm in Zambia, Zimbabwean author Alexandra Fuller encounters the enigmatic K, a crazed, battle-scarred veteran of the Rhodesian war and a devout born-again Christian. “Curiosity scribbled the cat,” warns Alexandra’s father as she attempts to find out more about the ex-soldier and the brutal war that shaped her childhood. She ignores his advice and, fascinated with K, she leaves her comfortable life in America, to travel with him through the battlefields of the Rhodesian war.

Death and war are heavy subjects. However despite the tragic tales of K and the other white ex-soldiers she meets, Fuller manages to inject some hilarity into her story with her witty, offhand descriptions of the surreal characters she encounters. After a failed marriage and the death of his only son, K has turned from a frightening, violent drunk into a holy rolling teetotaller. He feels God is punishing him for his actions during the war and he lives his life in penance on his isolated banana farm. He falls in love with Alexandra, seeing her as his redemption despite the fact that she is happily married with two children.

K is a difficult character to warm to, but like the author you cannot help but be fascinated by him. To Alexandra he is “romantic and brutish, a man who was both saviour and murderously dangerous.” He is unpredictable, at one moment weeping about the horrors of war and another openly communing with God, or casually flooring a friend’s pet lion that attempts to have the author for lunch. It is K’s fate that keeps you turning pages, you cannot help but sympathise with his tragic life. He is a mystery that the author wants to “write into coherence” she hopes that by understanding K she will find peace from the ghosts of her past.

As a child during the liberation war, Alexandra was a “small smug white girl shouting: ‘We are all Rhodesians and we’ll fight through thickanthin’” When K tells her how he brutally murdered a woman, she becomes involved in his war. She feels “every bit that woman’s murderer”. She is nauseated by the casual way that K and his cronies speak about killing. “Scribbled, plugged, slotted” are all words they use when explaining how they hunted down the enemy.

The book is an examination of how war affects those who live through it. The ex-soldiers Alexandra meets have lives that read like carbon copies of failed marriages, alcoholism, drug addiction and madness. Some have found redemption in God or alcohol, others live in solitude. In Mozambique she meets a man nicknamed Mapenga who lives in suicidal isolation on an island with a pet lion who mauls him regularly. His black cook, Andrew is also an ex-soldier who fought against Mapenga in the war. Andrew tells Alexandra that he fought for freedom but despite the fact that his side won the war, his situation has not changed.

Alexandra Fuller writes with a fierce passion for Africa and its people. Her beautiful description and vivid imagery bring the characters and landscape to life. Scribbling the Cat is a reminder to us all that the consequences of war go beyond which side had the highest death toll. It is a warning not to look too far back into our pasts. By her own admission, her emotional journey with K was more than she could cope with. She writes: “K volunteered his demons to me almost immediately. And I was too curious – too amazed to look the other way. It bloody nearly killed me.”
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Dec 21, 2009 Katie Lynn rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Once again I learn that the human spirit is amazing despite human frailty and fault.

"It's a good thing the Almighty forgives all of us. It doesn't matter"--now he leaned forward and fresh tears sprung--"how much of a shit you are, how much you've destroyed.... The Almighty forgives us. He holds us all in His hands."

"We were all lost after the war," he told me. "I reckon those of us who stopped dopping and sucking cabbage, we started to feel...shit! I mean, we actually started to think about what...more Once again I learn that the human spirit is amazing despite human frailty and fault.

"It's a good thing the Almighty forgives all of us. It doesn't matter"--now he leaned forward and fresh tears sprung--"how much of a shit you are, how much you've destroyed.... The Almighty forgives us. He holds us all in His hands."

"We were all lost after the war," he told me. "I reckon those of us who stopped dopping and sucking cabbage, we started to feel...shit! I mean, we actually started to think about what had happened to us because--you know--we had sobered up. How come we aren't dead? Where are we? Why are we here? What are we doing? We went from this incredible structure, this incredible focus and sense of purpose... You were either in, or out. Alive or dead. And then it was over and... All of a sardine, we had to figure it out by ourselves and what we found is that nothing seemed to matter about the outside world. It was all pointless. How much can it matter what kind of car you drive? How can it matter what you eat, I mean as long as you have enough to eat? How much can it matter what you wear? When you get down to it, what can matter more than being alive? But then what? You're alive and then... what?"

"I don't think we have all the words in a single vocabulary to explain what we are or why we are. I don't think we have the range of emotion to fully feel what someone else is feeling. I don't think any of us can sit in judgment of another human being. We're incomplete creatures, barely scraping by. Is it possible--from the perspective of this quickly spinning Earth and our speedy journey from crib to coffin--to know the difference between right, wrong, good, and evil? I don't know if it's even useful to try."

"How you see a country depends on whether or not you can leave it, if you have to."

"What do you see when you look in the mirror?" K asked suddenly. "Do you see yourself?"
"Yes."
"But yourself isn't a thing. How can you see something that isn't there? You are just meat and bones. That's what you should see. Flesh and blood, that's all. And all flesh and blood is... Do you want to know what flesh and blood is?" K waited. "You and me and every other person on this earth--we're all just a bloody corpse waiting to happen. I don't care how good-looking you think you are. How successful you believe you are. Your body is still just a corpse-in-waiting."

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Jul 22, 2012 John rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Mapenga looked exactly how you'd expect a man to look who spends his life alone on an island in the middle of a lake in Mozambique with a lion.
-- Page 188, "Scribbling the Cat."

Alexandra Fuller, who chronicled growing up in Africa in "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight," here tells of a return visit in the company of a half-crazed, lovesick, moody, jealous, born-again retired soldier whom she calls K. They revisit the places he served, not always honorably, as a soldier for the Rhodesian Light I...more

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Sep 01, 2011 Marc Weitz rated it 4 of 5 stars

After reading and enjoying Alexandra Fuller's first book, "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood," I found myself rushing to the library to get this, her second book. I wasn't disappointed. Having an affinity for Africa and having spent a long time traveling there, I could relate to the types of people and ex-pat culture she describes.

In this book, Mrs. Fuller meets up with an ex-Rhodesian Light Infantry soldier, a white-man who fought in the Rhodesian Civil War. "Scribbling"...more

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Aug 06, 2011 Amanda Patterson rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Alexandra Fuller’s first memoir, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2002, a national best-seller and a finalist in the Guardian first book award.

Scribbling the Cat is Alexandra Fuller's story about her friendship with K, a white veteran of the Rhodesian War. Her father tells her to leave him alone.
"Curiosity scribbled the cat," he says.

But Fuller travels with him back to Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia). The book is a savage memoir of the brutal war K fought. Th...more

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Feb 05, 2009 Bookmarks Magazine added it · review of another edition

Author of the highly acclaimed memoir Don't Let's Go To the Dogs Tonight, Fuller has developed a masterful prose style; the Kansas City Star calls her "powerful as a lion on the move." But lions aren't known for their self-reflection, and this is where Scribbling the Cat runs into trouble. Fuller willingly accepts her share of K's guilt. However, she doesn't truly change her view of herself, her people, or her homeland. And she leaves the reader with some troubling questions

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Oct 03, 2012 Shelley rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: narrative-non-fiction, africa

Scribbling the Cat is a strange and unsettling book. Like Fuller's two other Rhodesian memoirs, Don't Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight and Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness, it's hauntingly evocative and elegantly written. Once more, I was effortlessly transported to Southern Africa, "a land of almost breath-taking beauty or of savage poverty; a land of screaming ghosts or of sun-flung possibilities; a land of inviting warmth or of desperate drought" (143). But unlike the other two Rhodes...more Scribbling the Cat is a strange and unsettling book. Like Fuller's two other Rhodesian memoirs, Don't Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight and Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness, it's hauntingly evocative and elegantly written. Once more, I was effortlessly transported to Southern Africa, "a land of almost breath-taking beauty or of savage poverty; a land of screaming ghosts or of sun-flung possibilities; a land of inviting warmth or of desperate drought" (143). But unlike the other two Rhodesian memoirs, Scribbling the Cat is elusive and dark and ultimately it loses its momentum. Fuller’s charming sense of humor and endearing optimism are largely absent here, replaced, instead, by meandering reflections and a sense of foreboding that is never truly resolved.

When reading fiction, I normally try very hard to separate my feelings about the author from my attitudes about the book. With memoir, however, that's a little bit harder to do, because the author is selling not just her story, but also herself, to some extent - her values, impressions and presuppositions. And while I had started to develop a sort of benign "girl crush" on Fuller after reading her two other memoirs, this one left me questioning her character a little bit, and the book as a whole.

Instead of focusing on her childhood and family life growing up in Rhodesia, this memoir centers on Fuller's friendship and travels with a man whom she calls "K," an ex-soldier who fought on the losing side of the Rhodesian war. She meets "K" while visiting her parents' fish and banana farm in Zambia, and despite her father's warnings to steer clear of him, Fuller, who seems to be suffering from a kind of spiritual malaise, quickly develops a kindred connection with the man as they travel together alone, often in very intimate settings, through Zimbabwe and Mozambique. "K" is very much reminiscent of Stanley Kowalski , a volatile, choleric soul trapped in a shell of hyper masculinity. It's clear throughout the memoir that Fuller finds herself both repulsed by and strangely attracted to "K", which is problematic, since she is married with two children. Throughout the book, Fuller, who is so transparent in her other memoirs, remains silent on the appropriateness of this arrangement.

Fuller probably wouldn't have been able to write this book had "K" not developed romantic feelings for her shortly after their first meeting. And more than a few readers, myself probably included, seem to think that Fuller exploits “K’s” feelings order to get the goods---that is, the material she needs to write a compelling story. She's also on a kind of spiritual journey herself, and she thinks that if she can just figure out "K", then she might be able to make sense of her family's own involvement in the war. She expresses her desire to "label ["K"] and write him into coherence," and, by extension, herself. But "K" is a complex person, a professing "born again" Christian who is tormented by the ghosts of his past and driven by an unpredictable brew of sincere faith, erratic superstition, debilitating guilt and blind rage. By the end of both her literal and metaphorical journeys, we know very little about "K," and very little about Fuller and only a little bit more about Africa. Her goal – “to patch together enough words to make sense of [their] lives" (239) - is never realized, and only two major insights are communicated: that war indiscriminately breaks people’s bodies and souls and that Fuller indiscriminately breaks men’s hearts. The first insight I already suspected before reading this book and the second one I was sad to discover.
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Dec 17, 2011 Magdelanye rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: displacement, social-commentary, spiritual-adventure, travel

What is it about uncouth 'manly' men that attracts free spirited women?
Alexandra Fuller, leaving her American husband and two children at 'home' in suburban Wyoming,makes an extended Christmas visit to her folks at 'home' on their fish farm in Zambia. In an attempt to come to terms with her past, and not completely comfortable with her new life situation, she seeks to understand the violent events that occurred in her families lifetime,growing up in Rhodesia. She is drawn to K, an ex-soldier...more
What is it about uncouth 'manly' men that attracts free spirited women?
Alexandra Fuller, leaving her American husband and two children at 'home' in suburban Wyoming,makes an extended Christmas visit to her folks at 'home' on their fish farm in Zambia. In an attempt to come to terms with her past, and not completely comfortable with her new life situation, she seeks to understand the violent events that occurred in her families lifetime,growing up in Rhodesia. She is drawn to K, an ex-soldier who is a legend in the neighbourhood, who disarms her with his forthright belligerant vulnerability.

...that's where it usually all starts

Back in sububia for new years, she can't seem to slot herself back in. Her fascination with K's story and the reality of starving Africa juxtaposed against the excess of America, challenges the authenticity of her own American existance.

It's not long before she finds her way back to Africa, this time on assigment.She can't wait to see K again and devises a plan so outlandish and so offhand you can guess that it was already envisioned in minute detail.

The trip into K's past is also a journey of reconciliation for AF whose passionate curiousity and intimacy with Africa must come to some kind of truce for her to feel real wherever she goes.

So they are off, into real danger, and that they carry on despite volitile disagreements that do almost end in utter disaster. AF writes nimbly of their adventure and her candor is refreshingly devoid of egocentricity.Her instant rapport with people grates on K and he is especially jealous of his friends. That it is a quality that these men possess that is the source of her fascination, and not merely a mutable infatuaion, AF takes us with her into '...the great loneliness that stretched between...

AF does learn more than she ever wanted to about the effects of war on the psyche. She makes an valient attempt to share her feminist values with K when he is in the grip of his fantasies and maybe some of it got through because they make it back from Mozambique alive. Did she really need to go through all that to balance something in her that could now carry on? Whattever motivated her,it worked, and she sure was glad to be heading home at last. (less)

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Aug 30, 2011 Ronald Wise rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ms. Fuller was raised in Rhodesia from 1969 until the Rhodesian Civil War in 1981. Since then she had married and settled in Wyoming and her parents were living in Zambia near the border with Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia). While on a visit with her parents, she meets "K", a veteran of the all-white Rhodesian Light Infantry Commando Unit who owns a farm neighborning her parents' land. Enormously impressed by K, she talks him into accompanying her on a trip to Zimbabwe and Mozambique to gather mate...more

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Jun 18, 2012 Donna rated it 4 of 5 stars

Africa is mostly a mystery to me though I have recently read a number of books about different times and places in Africa. In this memoir, the author travels with a white African fighter from the Rhodesian war for independence which is not nearly as concise as it sounds. The various fighting groups from Rhodesia, Zambia, Mozambique, and eventually Zimbabwe were interwoven and overlapped so that killing became a lifestyle of competing guerilla groups. I can't help but think that while I was livin...more

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Oct 23, 2009 William rated it 3 of 5 stars

I really didn't care for this. It's non-fiction though so I wouldn't knock it just because I didn't like it. I simply do not like non-fiction. It's a great way for an author to take a story and write it out how they feel like. It's just... that's not the kind of writing I care for. It's like there's just too much focus at the sentence level. I simply don't care for non-fiction. Or sentimental or experimental writing.
Something... well... I dunno. There was some OK stuff. K is a piece of shit. Ver...more

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Jul 24, 2011 Jan Rice rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

My geography and history were expanded by this well-written memoir, which I listened to in the audio version. There is something that bothers me, though, in the way K's story was written--in the way his specialness was held up. Not that everyone isn't special and not that there is not something to be learned in a character study of any person, but something about the way it was done, and he a white male, and not a particular hero, when there were so many others. I do understand the author was at...more

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Jun 27, 2011 Elizabeth rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, biography-memoir

I read Alexandra Fuller's first memoir, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood several years ago and found it to be an interesting window into a part of the world about which I knew very little: Rhodesia-cum-Zimbabwe in the late 70s and early 80s. I remember being underwhelmed with her writing, but moved by her experiences with war, conflict, race, and tribe.

Scribbling the Cat isn't really her memoir, though it does tell the story of her experiences befriending and traveling wi...more

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Nov 30, 2009 Manda rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2008

I have had to take some time to think about this book, and I am still not sure how to approach it. Fuller’s previous book was an autobiographical relation of her childhood in Africa. This book is sort of autobiographical – relating her meeting in Africa of a man she calls K, and a little later the trip she and K took into Mozambique to cover the ground K covered as a soldier fighting in the Rhodesian army. But using the term autobiographical doesn’t quite fit the book, because although Fuller is...more I have had to take some time to think about this book, and I am still not sure how to approach it. Fuller’s previous book was an autobiographical relation of her childhood in Africa. This book is sort of autobiographical – relating her meeting in Africa of a man she calls K, and a little later the trip she and K took into Mozambique to cover the ground K covered as a soldier fighting in the Rhodesian army. But using the term autobiographical doesn’t quite fit the book, because although Fuller is the viewpoint through which we see K, and the other people they meet, she observes it all with so little comment that she almost disappears from the book. I see Fuller won the Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage in 2006, and maybe that is why I had difficulty with the book – I was expecting an autobiography.

After meeting Bobo (Fuller’s childhood nickname), the wildly alive child of the first book, blaming herself for the death of her sister, and leaving nothing, no matter how personal, out of her account, I was keen to reacquaint myself with her, and found the coyness with which any details of her life were hidden to be puzzling and frustrating.

Fuller writes as if I should be fascinated with K – but frankly I was not. An African soldier is too remote from my life for me to be much interested in him on the basis of his anecdotes and stories. I would need a full autobiography, with other people’s opinions, or his story in his own words. I couldn’t get any real feeling about what I might think of the man should I meet him from Fuller’s book. Would he feel threatening, or protective?

The book is odd as well in that the trip that K and Fuller take seems to be unfocused. They drive to Mozambique, then bump into an old comrade of K’s and stay with him, and then drive back to Zambia. Whether there was ever more of a travel plan than that in place is never made clear.

I am left still thinking about Bobo: about why she refuses to take her children to Africa to visit their grandparents; about how when leaving her children in America so that she can visit her parents she instead spends time with K; about leaving her children for even longer to take this unfocused trip with K, a man she clearly admires physically, a man she is clearly fascinated by.

Oh and scribbling the cat? It means killing the cat, something curiosity apparently does. (less)

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Mar 13, 2009 Mary Radmacher rated it 4 of 5 stars

i read this book from start to finish. couldn't put it down. always a four star sign to me.
what keeps me from giving this the fifth star is this: alexandra was exceptionally outward looking in
this book. i know that was the focus: i wanted to see more of her. she provided limited personal responses because she was looking outward at the character/individual she was highlighting. i'd be willing to spend
an entirely new day with the sequel to this book told from a more intimate and forthcoming point...more

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Jun 01, 2011 Ramarie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: adult-fic-nonfic

I was completely immersed in this combination travelogue and chronicle of the author's trip with a former soldier, who fought in the grueling and unforgiving Rhodesian war as a white soldier. As Fuller and the soldier travel between the former Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Malawi and Zambia, "K" is unflinchingly honest about his experiences and the part he played in them. The author, Fuller, grew up in Africa during the war, and so has her own demons to sort out. The soldier, only ever known as K in...more

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Feb 25, 2012 Sara rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Listening to a book is inevitably a much different experience than reading it. I would have enjoyed this book regardless, but narrator Lisette Lecat's flawless performance made this a truly fascinating journey. Because she's from South Africa, she has the sound of these characters' voices in her head and conveys them beautifully.

I'm puzzled by reviews criticizing Fuller for not divulging enough of herself. The book was intended as neither memoir nor travelogue but as a non-fiction piece that unc...more

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May 04, 2009 Heather rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, peace-corps

I read this book in one day - a long day of traveling, actually, so maybe that was just a fluke. If i hadn't had anything else to read and if my iPod hadn't died some days before, I probably would have put this down long before finishing.

I'm still processing this book. I think what bothered me about it was the fact that while I was reading it, i kept thinking, "Why on earth was this book even written? As some kind of catharsis for the author?" and basically that's probably the case. Fuller gets...more

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Dec 15, 2008 David rated it 3 of 5 stars

The author, now living in the USA, returns to Africa to visit her aging parents. When her father is reluctant to tell of his part in the Rhodesian war, she goes in search of other sources. She meets a man she calls only "K", a veteran of the Rhodesian Light Infantry, an all-white unit with a reputation for lethality. Fuller convinces him to travel with her to Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) and Mozambique in search of insight. Along the way, he revisits his memories of a brutal war he fought agains...more

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Jan 02, 2009 Katherine rated it 5 of 5 stars

Fuller’s story, Scribbling the Cat, depicts her journey with K., a former soldier during the Rhodesian War. K. fought against the native Africans, or “gondies,” as he calls them. K.’s story is a difficult one to read: he is admirable, fierce, gruesome, and sympathetic. It is due to Fuller’s brilliant writing that the reader is able to enter K.’s story and experience the emotions that overwhelm the tale.
Fuller and K. travel from Zambia through Zimbabwe and on into Mozambique in order for K. to...more

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Aug 28, 2011 Jules rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is a tough one to rate. I was completely engrossed in the story of "K," a battle-scarred veteran of the Rhodesian war, whom the author meets on a trip back to Zambia where she grew up. The two of them travel through Zimbabwe and Mozambique, so K can face his ghosts as a former soldier in a brutal war. As they meet other former soldiers and K's story is told through the author, it is a raw, fascinating book.

The issue I had with the book is that Fuller, whose writing in the autobiographical...more

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Apr 17, 2011 Kate rated it 4 of 5 stars

Fascinating subject matter. First read Fuller's "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight," if you haven't already. She grew up in Africa during times of war, daughter of white British parents trying to farm in the turbulent 70's. "Scribbling the Cat" is her experience interviewing and revisiting past battlegrounds with a Rhodesian man who fought in those wars. The entire bloody African history is such a tangled web of oppression, genocide, tribal wars, madness and savage cruelty. Fuller tries to unde...more

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Sep 23, 2012 Jgknobler rated it 2 of 5 stars

Visiting her parents in Zambia, Fuller takes up with a former white Rhodesian soldier, traveling with him through Mozambique to visit places he saw while fighting (on the wrong side, as Fuller says) in the Rhodesian War. I was fascinated by Fuller's earlier book, "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight," told from the point of view of a child. But I found the damaged, violent, alcoholic ex-soldiers that Fuller describes in this book just repulsive, and Fuller entirely too fascinated and sympathetic....more

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Aug 18, 2012 Martine Taylor rated it 3 of 5 stars

Who leaves their husband and kids in Wymoming to go follow a mysterious soldier around Africa for months? That's taking midlife crisis to a whole new level, isn't it? So it seems natural that there should have been more to this story...the author's emotions, any inner conflict or reasons for going on this journey are missing. She has a nice turn of phrase and a great way with dialogue. The "characters" are fascinating and the situations are never boring. I loved "Don't Let's Go To The Dogs Tonig...more

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About Alexandra Fuller

Alexandra Fuller has written four books of non-fiction.

Her debut book, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood (Random House, 2001), was a New York Times Notable Book for 2002, the 2002 Booksense best non-fiction book, a finalist for the Guardian’s First Book Award and the winner of the 2002 Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize.

Her 2004 Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldie...more

More about Alexandra Fuller...

Books by Alexandra Fuller

Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness

State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America

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Quotes from Scribbling the Cat

“What is important is the story. Because when we are all dust and teeth and kicked-up bits of skin - when we're dancing with our own skeletons - our words might be all that's left of us.” — 34 people liked it

“I don't think we have all the words in a single vocabulary to explain what we are or why we are. I don't think we have the range of emotion to fully feel what someone else is feeling. I don't think any of us can sit in judgment of another human being. We're incomplete creatures, barely scraping by. Is it possible--from the perspective of this quickly spinning Earth and our speedy journey from crib to coffin--to know the difference between right, wrong, good, and evil? I don't know if it's even useful to try.” — 6 people liked it

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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/83477.Scribbling_the_Cat?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1356449103l/83477.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/83477.Scribbling_the_Cat?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Scribbling the Cat by Alexandra Fuller[/url]

Scribbling the Cat

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