The Dust Diaries
By (Author) Owen Sheers
Faber & Faber
Faber & Faber
1st July 2005
3rd March 2005
Main
United Kingdom
General
Non Fiction
Biography: general
Travel writing
968.9102092
Paperback
336
Width 125mm, Height 196mm, Spine 23mm
290g
The captivating and emotional true tale of a journey through doomed love, personal discovery and the tragic story of colonial Zimbabwe. A few years ago, Owen Sheers stumbled upon a dusty book in his father's study by the extraordinary Arthur Cripps, part-time lyric poet and full-time unorthodox missionary, who served in Rhodesia for fifty years from 1902. Sheers' discovery prompts a quest, into colonial Africa at the turn of the century, by way of war, a doomed love affair and friction with the ruling authorities. His personal journey into the contemporary heart of darkness that is Mugabe's Zimbabwe finds more than Cripps' legacy - Sheers finds a land characterised by terror and fear, and blighted by the land reform policies that Cripps himself anticipated.
Born in Fiji in 1974, Owen Sheers was brought up in Abergavenny, South Wales. Named by the Independent on Sunday as one of Britain's Top Thirty Young Writers, he is the author of the acclaimed poetry collection The Blue Book. The Dust Diaries is his first book of prose.