THE LAST RESORT: A MEMOIR OF ZIMBABWE by Douglas Rogers
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Entertainment & Arts - Books & Literature
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The Last Resort is a dark, comic, true-life thriller about Lyn and Ros Rogers, white Africans of many generations, struggling to hold on to their game farm and backpacker lodge in Robert Mugabe's war-torn Zimbabwe. Travel writer Douglas Rogers returns to the family farm from his home in Brooklyn, New York to discover that marijuana is growing instead of maize; prostitutes, diamond dealers, and refugee farmers prop up the lodge bar, and war veterans and youth militia loyal to Mugabe hover... (read more)
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THE LAST RESORT: A MEMOIR OF ZIMBABWE by Douglas Rogers
Category:
Entertainment & Arts - Books & Literature
Description:
The Last Resort is a dark, comic, true-life thriller about Lyn and Ros Rogers, white Africans of many generations, struggling to hold on to their game farm and backpacker lodge in Robert Mugabe's war-torn Zimbabwe. Travel writer Douglas Rogers returns to the family farm from his home in Brooklyn, New York to discover that marijuana is growing instead of maize; prostitutes, diamond dealers, and refugee farmers prop up the lodge bar, and war veterans and youth militia loyal to Mugabe hover... (read more)
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News:
READING: THURSDAY, 5TH NOV,

7PM AT MCNALLY JACKSON, 52 PRINCE ST

http://mcnallyjackson.com

Come along

UPCOMING COURT APPEARANCE

WEDNESDAY OCT 28TH, 7PM

I'm going to Court this Wednesday - BookCourt in Brooklyn, 7pm. I will be reading words from this book wot I wrote. Come along to heckle, cheer, and buy a dozen copies of it each so that I may feed my family.

BookCourt,
163 Court Street (between Pacific & Dean)
Brooklyn, NY 11201
(718) 875.3677

OCTOBER 8TH

BOOK PARTY MAKES PAGE 6 OF THE NEW YORK POST!

My work here is done

Lecter illusion at book party

AT the SoHo book party for Douglas Roger's darkly comic memoir of Zimbabwe, "The Last Resort," many guests mistook the party's host, philanthropist and art collector Henry Buhl, for Sir Anthony Hopkins. Buhl bears such an uncanny resemblance to the Oscar-winning actor that even after people had conversations with him, many were still convinced they were speaking with Hannibal Lecter himself.

OCTOBER 2
IN 'WHAT PEOPLE ARE TALKING ABOUT COLUMN'
VOGUE NAME THE LAST RESORT AS ONE OF
THE 'MEMOIRS OF THE SEASON'.

CALL IT 'CORROSIVELY FUNNY'

Respect to the style press.

"Zimbabwe in vertiginous decline is the backdrop for Douglas Rogers’s corrosively funny The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe (Harmony), in which Roger’s parents, among the country’s last remaining white farmers, attract everyone from prostitutes and diamond dealers to their backpacker lodge".

Link is here:

http://www.style.com/vogue/voguedaily/2009/10/books-the-seasons-best-memoirs/

SEPTEMBER 27TH

WALL STREET JOURNAL RUN PROMINENT REVIEW OF THE BOOK BY EMINENT HISTORIAN MARTIN MEREDITH

It's a great space on the op-ed page and a decent review, but it appears Mr. Meredith wanted a book about something else. History perhaps. Or politics. See for yourself.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204731804574383044272611748.html

22ND SEPTEMBER, 2009 - MY BOOK IS OUT TODAY. WOO-HOO!

Just went into a bookstore on Broadway, and there, looking at me in the window, was... just a bunch of other books. maybe the trucks haven't arrived yet.

Or maybe it's actually an e-book, and will not be coming out in pulped wood, just online, in segments, like here:

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/zimbabwe/090921/zimbabwe-opposition-rally-marked-tension-emotion

TIME magazine review my book - and it's corker!

www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1920048,00.html

TIME

Monday, Sep. 14, 2009
Zimbabwe's Home Truths

By ALEX PERRY

Having produced extraordinary works by the likes of Peter Godwin (Mukiwa), Alexandra Fuller (Scribbling the Cat) and Nobel laureate Doris Lessing, Zimbabwe's troubles seem to prove that you need to suffer for your art. But those authors are white, and Zimbabwe is a country of millions of blacks, whose troubles have undoubtedly been worse. So do we really need another memoir by a white Zimbabwean?

The surprising answer is yes, if it's as good as Douglas Rogers' The Last Resort. Like Godwin and Fuller, Rogers is a Zimbabwean journalist who moved to the U.S. only to discover that he'd left his biggest story at home. His tale recounts how, as Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe collapses around them, the author's parents turn their backpackers' lodge first into a bordello, then a diamond smugglers' dive, then a refuge for opposition activists — as all the while they farm marijuana. (See pictures of Robert Mugabe.)

A ripping yarn, for sure. But it is in the nuance Rogers brings to Zimbabwe that he truly excels. His characters, and his country, are full of contradictions. His parents' defiance of Mugabe's regime is partly based on ignorance. Their enemies can be cruel, greedy and bloodthirsty, but also kind and righteous. As the country implodes, Rogers' tough, cynical mother breaks down in the middle of a bungled backstreet deal for a fake passport. Her idea of Zimbabwe, she realizes, is a long way from the daily reality faced by millions of her countrymen, or even, now, herself. "She no longer understood her town ..." writes Rogers, "the town where she had been born 66 years before."

It's scenes like these that move The Last Resort beyond memoir to become a chronicle of a nation. There is black and white, yes, but much more in the shades and tones of their mix — and it is in exploring them that Rogers, too, finds his art.

LATEST REVIEW - SEPT 10th, 2009

Shelf-Awareness, a very influential trade publication, say:

http://news.shelf-awareness.com/ar/theshelf/2009-09-10/book_review_i_the_last_resort_i.html

Although Zimbabwe has been the focus of several recent books (When A Crocodile Eats the Sun and The Boy Next Door to name two standouts), there is room on the shelf for Douglas Rogers's The Last Resort, a lively, wry, but deeply heartfelt account of the country in which he was born and raised and his efforts to rescue his parents from the escalating chaos of Mugabe's regime and the mounting danger they faced on the family farm.

A New York journalist, Rogers returned to Mutare, Zimbabwe (located at the edge of the Mozambique border) in 2002 after hearing of violence erupting around Mugabe's land reclamation program, which reassigned white-owned farms to dubious "war veterans." Arriving a few days before an election, Rogers found his parents (owners of Drifters, a highly successful backpacker lodge featured in the Lonely Planet guides) unfazed and optimistic about an imminent shift in political power. But as soon becomes very clear, the election is rigged to favor Mugabe, and dissenters are punished severely. Despite increasing violence, outrageous inflation and the exodus of almost all their white friends (in fact, almost all whites), Rogers's parents won't consider leaving their mountainous, beautiful farm (which Rogers describes in exquisite detail). They are true Africans, Rogers's parents maintain (their families have lived on the continent for 350 years), and they will not be forced off.

As the years pass and conditions degenerate, Rogers's parents are forced to adapt and survive in creative ways. On a subsequent visit, Rogers finds that his father has begun growing marijuana and that the lodge is doing a brisk business as a brothel. Rogers also finds that his parents have accumulated a posse of quirky characters with whom they do business; among them a black market money launderer, diamond dealers and political opponents. Despite their tenacity and resilience, however, the Rogers's farm becomes a target and they find themselves in very real peril.

Rogers creates a vivid, multilayered portrait of Zimbabwe; maintaining a keen eye for beauty as well as the absurd. His journalist's drive to uncover the real story is evident in the textured descriptions of Zimbabwe's people, history and even its landscape. He succeeds in creating a narrative that is informative, moving and often very funny. Perhaps what makes this memoir so compelling, however--beyond the attention it calls to the dire situation in Zimbabwe--are its subtle but striking comments on family, country and identity.--Debra Ginsberg

Shelf Talker: A fascinating view of Zimbabwe as told by an expatriate journalist who goes home to help his parents.

OTHER TRADE PRESS REVIEWS, INCLUDING 'STARRED' WRITE-UP FROM PUBLISHERS WEEKLY:

* Born in Zimbabwe, New York-based travel writer Rogers moves between two worlds with wit and grace... Angst, humor, beauty and terror mingle freely in his narrative… This rousing memoir should win over anyone with a taste for exotic can’t-go-home-again stories. (Sept.) – PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6676893.html

BOOKLIST:

…From dollars and diamonds to pot and prostitution, Rogers shows what survival looks like when your government loses its collective mind. Brilliantly funny and wry. – Colleen Mondor (Aug)

I like those last four words.

KIRKUS:

A Brooklyn travel writer returns to his South African homeland to rescue the family farm from imminent danger. Eye-opening memoir weaving violent Zimbabwean politics with the camaraderie and fearlessness of a family in crisis. (Aug)


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A lot of people have asked to see an extract from the book. Legally I can't post an extract yet, but this article published in the Saturday Telegraph magazine on the diamond dealers I met at the lodge includes several sections that appear in the book, and one of the main characters - Fatso.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/zimbabwe/5055332/Zimbabwes-great-diamond-rush-brutally-suppressed-by-Robert-Mugabes-regime.html

I was on Fox Business Network Thursday night talking about the book and Zimbabwe's blood diamonds.

See the clip here:

http://media2.foxnews.com/071009/070909_blood_diamonds_doug_rogers_W700.wmv

South Africa news:

The book has been bought at auction by Jonathan Ball, the venerable South African publisher. It will be published in SA in October, a month after the US release. I will be on book tour in SA in late November.


Release date has been put forward to Sept 22, folks.
The powers that be want you to get this baby in your hands. Pre-order at www.douglasrogers.org

Scroll down on the site to links for Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Borders, and Indiebound