I love reading memoirs over the summer. It's a guilty pleasure. To be clear, I'm not talking about high brow memoirs. I go for the tales of serious family dysfunction. It's like junk food for me, although some of them are very well written, and a few even win literary awards. I will probably make a post about some of my favorites.

Today I want to talk about Zimbabwe Memoirs. I developed a little weird fascination with this genre about 10 years ago. I'm sure most people are familiar with the basic history. Formerly Rhodesia, Zimbabwe revolted against its apartheid colonial past in the early 1980s. Robert Mugabe was their heroic leader. As the years went by, his reign became more and more authoritarian and violent, rewarding friends and persecuting enemies. He destroyed the agrarian based economy and confiscated while owned farms that had previously fed the country. That caused widespread poverty and famously destroyed the currency.

The books I list below tell the personal stories of lives uprooted during this transition:

I recommend them all. Peter Godwin has written many books about his personal experiences in Zimbabwe. The two I list here are fascinating. Alexandra Fuller and Lauren St John are both excellent writers, and they are both honest about their family biases that color the stories.

Note that I have included "When Money Destroys Nations", although it is more the Zimbabwe version of "When Money Dies" than a memoir. Still, it contains interesting personal stories and will be of particular interest to those concerned with the debasement of fiat money.