What do you think?
Rate this book
Exit Wounds: A Story of Love, Loss, and Occasional Wars
Award-winning writer Peter Godwin brings his “moving” (The Sunday Times, London) voice to his latest memoir about his evolving relationships with the women and places that shaped his life.
Peter Godwin’s mother is dying.
Born in England, and having spent most of her adult life as a doctor in Zimbabwe, she now lies on a hospital bed in the partitioned living room of his sister’s London home.
Peter has spent his life missing his Zimbabwean childhood, a longing that does not diminish as he reflects on his time as a journalist on the frontlines of combat around the world, or life in New York with his English wife and transatlantic children. In his mother’s final months, he must come to terms with everything his family was and wasn’ the secrets they kept from one another, the stoicism that sometimes threatened to destroy them, and the beauty of the wildly different places they called home.
With generations of history behind him, Godwin lyrically brings us into the spaces which make us question and suffer, shows us how we can heal our own scars, and celebrate the lives we have among family and friends.
Peter Godwin’s mother is dying.
Born in England, and having spent most of her adult life as a doctor in Zimbabwe, she now lies on a hospital bed in the partitioned living room of his sister’s London home.
Peter has spent his life missing his Zimbabwean childhood, a longing that does not diminish as he reflects on his time as a journalist on the frontlines of combat around the world, or life in New York with his English wife and transatlantic children. In his mother’s final months, he must come to terms with everything his family was and wasn’ the secrets they kept from one another, the stoicism that sometimes threatened to destroy them, and the beauty of the wildly different places they called home.
With generations of history behind him, Godwin lyrically brings us into the spaces which make us question and suffer, shows us how we can heal our own scars, and celebrate the lives we have among family and friends.
281 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 8, 2025
153 people are currently reading
960 people want to read
About the author
Peter Godwin
24 books352 followers"Peter Godwin was born and raised in Africa. He studied law at Cambridge University, and international relations at Oxford. He is an award winning foreign correspondent, author, documentary-maker and screenwriter.
After practicing human rights law in Zimbabwe, he became a foreign and war correspondent, and has reported from over 60 countries, including wars in: Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Somalia, Congo, Ivory Coast, Sudan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Kashmir and the last years of apartheid South Africa. He served as East European correspondent and Diplomatic correspondent for the London Sunday Times, and chief correspondent for BBC television's flagship foreign affairs program, Assignment, making documentaries from such places as: Cuba, Panama, Indonesia, Pakistan, Spain, Northern Ireland, the Philippines, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, the Baltics, and the Balkans as it descended into war. His film, The Industry of Death, about the sex trade in Thailand, won the gold medal for investigative film at the New York Film Festival.
He also wrote and co-presented a three part series 'Africa Unmasked' for Britain's Channel Four. He has written for a wide array of magazines and newspapers including Vanity Fair, (for which he was a 2009 finalist for the Michael Kelly award) National Geographic, New York Times magazine and Men’s Journal.
He is the author of five non fiction books: 'Rhodesians Never Die' - The Impact of war and Political Change on White Rhodesia c.1970 - 1980 (with Ian Hancock), Wild at Heart: Man and Beast in Southern Africa (with photos by Chris Johns and foreword by Nelson Mandela), The Three of Us - a New Life in New York (with Joanna Coles) and Mukiwa, which received the George Orwell prize and the Esquire-Apple-Waterstones award. When a Crocodile Eats the Sun - a Memoir of Africa, won the Borders Original Voices Award, and was selected by American Libraries Association as a Notable Book winner for 2008.
He has taught writing at: the New School, Princeton and Columbia. And he is a 2010 Guggenheim Fellow."
http://petergodwin.com/about/
After practicing human rights law in Zimbabwe, he became a foreign and war correspondent, and has reported from over 60 countries, including wars in: Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Somalia, Congo, Ivory Coast, Sudan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Kashmir and the last years of apartheid South Africa. He served as East European correspondent and Diplomatic correspondent for the London Sunday Times, and chief correspondent for BBC television's flagship foreign affairs program, Assignment, making documentaries from such places as: Cuba, Panama, Indonesia, Pakistan, Spain, Northern Ireland, the Philippines, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, the Baltics, and the Balkans as it descended into war. His film, The Industry of Death, about the sex trade in Thailand, won the gold medal for investigative film at the New York Film Festival.
He also wrote and co-presented a three part series 'Africa Unmasked' for Britain's Channel Four. He has written for a wide array of magazines and newspapers including Vanity Fair, (for which he was a 2009 finalist for the Michael Kelly award) National Geographic, New York Times magazine and Men’s Journal.
He is the author of five non fiction books: 'Rhodesians Never Die' - The Impact of war and Political Change on White Rhodesia c.1970 - 1980 (with Ian Hancock), Wild at Heart: Man and Beast in Southern Africa (with photos by Chris Johns and foreword by Nelson Mandela), The Three of Us - a New Life in New York (with Joanna Coles) and Mukiwa, which received the George Orwell prize and the Esquire-Apple-Waterstones award. When a Crocodile Eats the Sun - a Memoir of Africa, won the Borders Original Voices Award, and was selected by American Libraries Association as a Notable Book winner for 2008.
He has taught writing at: the New School, Princeton and Columbia. And he is a 2010 Guggenheim Fellow."
http://petergodwin.com/about/
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 65 reviews
November 6, 2024
This memoir is pure perfection. I think the reason this resonated with me so deeply is because many of my friends have emigrated, and although my husband and I have decided to stay in South Africa, we are encouraging our children to seriously consider moving to another country when they start working. I can't imagine how much I would miss this beautiful, entrepreneurial country with its always smiling and friendly people, magnificent natural beauty and delicious food. I feel for anyone who has to leave their birth place to make a life somewhere else, especially if they are from Africa as I think anything else will feel like a muted version of africa's melting pot of diverse cultures.
In Exit Wounds Peter Godwin shares his personal experiences of losing his native country, his wife, and his mother. The writing is exquisite, and the author is incredibly honest about his thoughts and feelings. The interesting mix of memories, historical documents, conversations, literary references, and insightful facts made this one of my top three books for 2024.
In Exit Wounds Peter Godwin shares his personal experiences of losing his native country, his wife, and his mother. The writing is exquisite, and the author is incredibly honest about his thoughts and feelings. The interesting mix of memories, historical documents, conversations, literary references, and insightful facts made this one of my top three books for 2024.
"It's the exit wound that kills you."
December 7, 2024
If you have never read anything by this author, I would start with Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa.
I see my own country reflected in Peter’s prose when he describes Zimbabwe full of beauty, brutality and resilience. The tragedy of what has happened to this once flourishing country is still keenly felt in South Africa.
I can also see how writing this was therapeutic for Peter. With his mother dying and marriage falling apart he takes the time to deeply reflect on the pivotal moments in his life and the scars left behind.
It’s a short memoir but one to savour.
I see my own country reflected in Peter’s prose when he describes Zimbabwe full of beauty, brutality and resilience. The tragedy of what has happened to this once flourishing country is still keenly felt in South Africa.
I can also see how writing this was therapeutic for Peter. With his mother dying and marriage falling apart he takes the time to deeply reflect on the pivotal moments in his life and the scars left behind.
It’s a short memoir but one to savour.
December 13, 2024
'I lie in bed unable to sleep, taking stock of my restless, unsettled existence. It seems to me that leaving is what’s most wrenching in life. I wonder if that’s what has happened to me, that my life has too many discontinuities, too many fractures and faded friendships. That too many farewells may have broken me, so that I no longer have a coherent character'.
The distinction between exotic and indigenous, between native and foreign, is blurred. The urge for vanilla purity and pious pedigree is pernicious, born of prejudice and fuelled by fear. It is suffocating and limiting and most of all, bloody boring. E pluribus unum, baby. We’re messy and mixed up. But isn’t it that very melange that makes us mighty? (Godwin)
The chief gift from Africa to writers, white and black, is the continent itself, its presence which for some people is like an old fever, latent always in their blood, or like an old wound throbbing in the bones as the air changes. That is not a place to visit unless one chooses to be an exile ever afterwards. (Lessing)
A book of love loss and identity. And of Zimbabwean homesickness. For those who have travelled the globe to find themselves and are still not there after decades of soul searching, Peter Godwin's words are a balm for the wounded and restless seekers. He says he hasnt found his tribe, but I would rate him as an honoured guest in mine. His writing is both lyrical and perceptive releasing emotions from decades of ossification into dreamlike but palpable soulful realities. Those maps in our inner selves that are rarely but so precisely penned by the ultimate wordsmith. I hope Godwin writes more to meet me again at the turning of the decade and conjure words that so aptly describe our unconscious paths on maps that many of us ultimately navigate, ultimately alone, somehow in parallel, but without ever crossing.
The distinction between exotic and indigenous, between native and foreign, is blurred. The urge for vanilla purity and pious pedigree is pernicious, born of prejudice and fuelled by fear. It is suffocating and limiting and most of all, bloody boring. E pluribus unum, baby. We’re messy and mixed up. But isn’t it that very melange that makes us mighty? (Godwin)
The chief gift from Africa to writers, white and black, is the continent itself, its presence which for some people is like an old fever, latent always in their blood, or like an old wound throbbing in the bones as the air changes. That is not a place to visit unless one chooses to be an exile ever afterwards. (Lessing)
A book of love loss and identity. And of Zimbabwean homesickness. For those who have travelled the globe to find themselves and are still not there after decades of soul searching, Peter Godwin's words are a balm for the wounded and restless seekers. He says he hasnt found his tribe, but I would rate him as an honoured guest in mine. His writing is both lyrical and perceptive releasing emotions from decades of ossification into dreamlike but palpable soulful realities. Those maps in our inner selves that are rarely but so precisely penned by the ultimate wordsmith. I hope Godwin writes more to meet me again at the turning of the decade and conjure words that so aptly describe our unconscious paths on maps that many of us ultimately navigate, ultimately alone, somehow in parallel, but without ever crossing.
October 6, 2024
Full of pathos
I am a slow reader but Peter Godwin's writing always pivots me to the next chapter. I could relate to so much of this latest work, i.e. having to leave my beloved Zimbabwe, looking after my Rhodesian-pioneer mum in the UK and the heartache of her demise during her last days, my own broken marriage, and the sense of not quite belonging to any country. However, Peter's writing is not asking for sympathy, for he has quite obviously accepted his fate with dignified resignation. There are other gripping dimensions to his journey in this compelling read.
I am a slow reader but Peter Godwin's writing always pivots me to the next chapter. I could relate to so much of this latest work, i.e. having to leave my beloved Zimbabwe, looking after my Rhodesian-pioneer mum in the UK and the heartache of her demise during her last days, my own broken marriage, and the sense of not quite belonging to any country. However, Peter's writing is not asking for sympathy, for he has quite obviously accepted his fate with dignified resignation. There are other gripping dimensions to his journey in this compelling read.
Read
August 21, 2024I rarely read non-fiction/memoirs but I always find them difficult to rate when I do. This is generally not my favourite genre which is probably why I found this quite hard to get into - however, you can't deny that Godwin's life is fascinating and the sections about his beloved mother's dying days really touched me.
Thank you to Canongate Books for my early copy!
Thank you to Canongate Books for my early copy!
July 10, 2025
Peter Godwin grew up in Zimbabwe, previously Rhodesia, and Exit Wounds chronicles his unusual life and that of his mother, Dr. Helen Godwin, one of the first women to be accepted into St Barthlomew's to study medicine.
Her work in Africa as the only doctor for thousands of miles took a toll on motherhood. However, in the last years of her life Peter visits regularly from his home in New York and this book describes their complicated relationship and the impact of history, secrets and wars that has shaped his life and those of his family.
Exit Wounds is about grief, dislocation and the search for home. Focusing on his unusual childhood and his extraordinary family Peter Godwin draws us into a story which resonates with understanding about the experiences and losses that shape us and the importance of acceptance. Beautifully written, the prose is littered with powerful imagery, mythology, poetry and literature. The Godwins do not easily emote but the spare accounting of devastating sadnesses is heartbreaking.
Searingly frank and irreverent humour between Peter and his sister Georgina lightens the sombre reason for his visits to London, their mother is dying and they are bearing witness to her demise.
If you enjoy memoir, this is not to be missed. It offers insights into family life, the trauma of witnessing atrocities of war (he was conscripted as a boy soldier and became a war correspondent), the break down of his marriage and the importance of latibulating, the act of retreating from the world to seek solace.
Take this book with you when you do.
November 23, 2024
Deeply moving memoir! Masterful storytelling! Poetic language, infused with intense emotion! Thoroughly researched! Truly moving!
I thought Mukiwa was amazing and that such works could not be outdone, but I stand to convince myself otherwise!
Godwin is a stellar storyteller! Excellent work of literature and art, moreso, a deeply resonant story because of how it's masterfully told!
I thought Mukiwa was amazing and that such works could not be outdone, but I stand to convince myself otherwise!
Godwin is a stellar storyteller! Excellent work of literature and art, moreso, a deeply resonant story because of how it's masterfully told!
May 6, 2025
What was Godwin thinking when he wrote, what seems to me to be his last book about his childhood and family? I have read his previous books. As a Rhodesian who left home in 1977 they made me morose, angry, sad. They were very well written.I flipped through these books again. They are very readable for the average literate person. 'Exit Wounds' is not. I finished it last nigh. In my opinion Godwin has forgotten his readership base. It is as though he sat with a thesaurus while writing. I picked up J.M. Coetzee's 'Disgrace' and flipped through
that. It won him the 1999 Booker prize. It is 'readable' by the average literate person. He did not require a thesaurus.
that. It won him the 1999 Booker prize. It is 'readable' by the average literate person. He did not require a thesaurus.
January 16, 2025
I looked forward to this since I heard it was being published, having read all of Peter Godwin’s previous books. And I enjoyed reading about this chapter in his life. My main comment is that there were parts where I felt really involved in and compelled to keep reading, and then some more bitty sections, where I lost that momentum.
July 20, 2025
While I loved Mukiwa, and When a Crocodile Eats the Sun, I was quite disappointed with this book which focuses on the last years of the author's 90+ year old ailing mother and his uneasy relationship with her stemming from his childhood. The previous two books were based on Peter Godwin's life in Zimbabwe and opened up a deeper view of a country next door to mine, that is similar, but not as well known to me as my own. In those books, he and his family had to negotiate the tumultuous changes of the country from a colony to an independent African country and there is no doubt of the trauma he and his family suffered being caught in the centre of the process. There was weight to these books that his latest one, based on his family life in the USA, but mainly on his relationship with his aged mother in London, is lacking. His mother was a strong, independent woman who was an admirable doctor, highly intelligent and well educated. She was truly a remarkable person even with her flaws (she was an extremely negligent mother) but I was fully aware of this from reading the author’s earlier books. In Exit Wounds, I got weary of hearing her pithy sayings and shibboleths and I groaned inside when she came back as the subject. This is not to detract from her and her many achievements, but her eccentricities seemed somewhat over-exposed here.
In fairness, it’s difficult to fault the author for giving so much attention to his family in a personal memoir focused on his relationships with them, but I also felt the book was marred by the extensive inclusion of too many random facts that were of no interest to me in the context of the story. I wasn't reading this to find out more about Francis Willughby the 17th century ornithologist. Or wolf fables. Or Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Or Napoleon’s privates. I can look up what I don't know about them separately, if I want to , but I have my own areas of curiosity and can't be so casually steered into someone else's.
Doubtless I expected something quite different from what the author's intention was, but for me, his family, so captivating and interesting in Zimbabwe, came across as mundane and uninspiring in a first world setting. (Not their fault at all, I hasten to add). On the other hand, the author was very successful in depicting his family related traumas and vulnerabilities with depth and honesty.
Although I did not respond well to this book, I still rate Peter Godwin highly as a writer and will most certainly catch up on other books of his I haven't yet read.
PS. I followed up on the author's reference to Ibrahim Maalouf’s trumpet playing and found an absolute gem. I'm grateful for that . And hooked.
In fairness, it’s difficult to fault the author for giving so much attention to his family in a personal memoir focused on his relationships with them, but I also felt the book was marred by the extensive inclusion of too many random facts that were of no interest to me in the context of the story. I wasn't reading this to find out more about Francis Willughby the 17th century ornithologist. Or wolf fables. Or Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Or Napoleon’s privates. I can look up what I don't know about them separately, if I want to , but I have my own areas of curiosity and can't be so casually steered into someone else's.
Doubtless I expected something quite different from what the author's intention was, but for me, his family, so captivating and interesting in Zimbabwe, came across as mundane and uninspiring in a first world setting. (Not their fault at all, I hasten to add). On the other hand, the author was very successful in depicting his family related traumas and vulnerabilities with depth and honesty.
Although I did not respond well to this book, I still rate Peter Godwin highly as a writer and will most certainly catch up on other books of his I haven't yet read.
PS. I followed up on the author's reference to Ibrahim Maalouf’s trumpet playing and found an absolute gem. I'm grateful for that . And hooked.
October 7, 2024
Exit Wounds by Peter Godwin
Both the books I read this month have narrators who find themselves, in mid-life lost, like Dante: “In The Middle Of The Journey Of Our Life I Came To Myself Within A Dark Wood Where The Straight Way Was Lost”.
In Exit Wounds, Peter Godwin (“Mukiwa” and “When a Crocodile Eats the Sun”) finds himself in this dark place. After a life as a successful writer, journalist, war reporter, he’s now in dark woods. His mother, Helen Godwin, Her Grace, aged 90, is dying, as is his marriage. He is forced to confront his “Smothered memories,” as Nabokov called them in Lolita, memories “now unfolding themselves into limbless monsters of pain.”
Godwin says the entry point of a wound can be insignificant, often small, pursed. It’s the exit wound that gets you, where you see the damage (what the bullet/ spear/ knife/shrapnel has caused on the inside). It’s what kills you.
A beautifully written memoir, Godwin considers the life of emigres, exiles, refugees. He grieves the many losses that make up a life. Much feels familiar — he grew up in Southern Africa, the then Rhodesia, was conscripted into the Bush War, where some of the early wounds were inflicted.
He’s reported on apartheid, the TRC, war in parts of Africa, the Middle East, but it’s his telling this story, a story so tender, so achingly beautiful, peppered with literary references, and childhood memories that resonate with someone his age. This book leaves me holding my breath wet-eyed for the beauty, the resonance. Godwin may have found himself in a dark wood, but as the poet David Whyte says, “Stand still, the trees ahead and the bushes besides you are not lost, wherever you are is called Here … the forest knows where you are, you must let it find you.” Godwin is found.
Both the books I read this month have narrators who find themselves, in mid-life lost, like Dante: “In The Middle Of The Journey Of Our Life I Came To Myself Within A Dark Wood Where The Straight Way Was Lost”.
In Exit Wounds, Peter Godwin (“Mukiwa” and “When a Crocodile Eats the Sun”) finds himself in this dark place. After a life as a successful writer, journalist, war reporter, he’s now in dark woods. His mother, Helen Godwin, Her Grace, aged 90, is dying, as is his marriage. He is forced to confront his “Smothered memories,” as Nabokov called them in Lolita, memories “now unfolding themselves into limbless monsters of pain.”
Godwin says the entry point of a wound can be insignificant, often small, pursed. It’s the exit wound that gets you, where you see the damage (what the bullet/ spear/ knife/shrapnel has caused on the inside). It’s what kills you.
A beautifully written memoir, Godwin considers the life of emigres, exiles, refugees. He grieves the many losses that make up a life. Much feels familiar — he grew up in Southern Africa, the then Rhodesia, was conscripted into the Bush War, where some of the early wounds were inflicted.
He’s reported on apartheid, the TRC, war in parts of Africa, the Middle East, but it’s his telling this story, a story so tender, so achingly beautiful, peppered with literary references, and childhood memories that resonate with someone his age. This book leaves me holding my breath wet-eyed for the beauty, the resonance. Godwin may have found himself in a dark wood, but as the poet David Whyte says, “Stand still, the trees ahead and the bushes besides you are not lost, wherever you are is called Here … the forest knows where you are, you must let it find you.” Godwin is found.
September 24, 2024
Beautifully Written
Born and raised in Zimbabwe of mostly absent or detached parents, sent to boarding school aged six, I identify with so much of what Peter Godwin experienced growing up in a rural part that country and leaving as a young adult. It will always be home to so many of us and he captures the essence of what it means to have those “exit wounds”. The political tragedy of what has happened to this once flourishing country and its people is heartbreaking and most of the world remains oblivious.
Born and raised in Zimbabwe of mostly absent or detached parents, sent to boarding school aged six, I identify with so much of what Peter Godwin experienced growing up in a rural part that country and leaving as a young adult. It will always be home to so many of us and he captures the essence of what it means to have those “exit wounds”. The political tragedy of what has happened to this once flourishing country and its people is heartbreaking and most of the world remains oblivious.
May 24, 2025
I’ve never read this author. Maybe his books are different from his memoir because I truly struggled with this one. Some of his tidbits started to be interesting and then completely switched to something totally different. It was so disorganized I could barely follow it. So many of his little jumping around tales could have been interesting if I could have even followed them. I’be read numerous books about people who grew up in Rhodesia and always find them interesting. This could have been but was too hard to make sense of.
September 21, 2024
Absolutely brilliant !
Heart wrenching and visceral. I loved the honesty of this book and as with all of Peter’s books I struggled to put it down. As a fellow Zimbabwean the book resonated strongly with my feelings of dislocation.
Heart wrenching and visceral. I loved the honesty of this book and as with all of Peter’s books I struggled to put it down. As a fellow Zimbabwean the book resonated strongly with my feelings of dislocation.
September 24, 2024
Peter Godwin’s writing completely overwhelms me with its power, integrity and erudition. In 2024 so many of us are exiles. It doesn’t matter from where or when. This book will speak to you. Highly recommended.
January 1, 2025
Not his best, no clear story. Just bits and pieces of peacocking.
April 14, 2025
I absolutely loved this very moving book written by Zimbabwe-born, Cambridge-educated former war correspondent Peter Godwin.
September 22, 2025
BEST book I've read this year. He's a superb writer and the story is sometimes funny, often tragic and important to better understand a part of Africa.
October 24, 2025
Brilliant read - I learnt so much from Greek mythology to to ketamine treatments .
Thought provoking phrases like " getting of the coil of mortality "
A powerful writer with so much knowledge and wisdom tenderness and heartache love for his family.
We are all migrating swallows .
Thought provoking phrases like " getting of the coil of mortality "
A powerful writer with so much knowledge and wisdom tenderness and heartache love for his family.
We are all migrating swallows .
October 27, 2025
At times it feels like the author spilled a thesaurus on a really great book. I still really enjoyed it.
December 31, 2024
I read this book after reading Mukuwa and Crocodile. It follows PG's life chronologically as he and his sister watch over the last days of his mother in a London hospital. It's an accurate description of how those days are: pathos, impatience, logistics, ruminations about life. The story feels both more personal to him and thus less capable of being shared, but also more generic than his previous works. As entertainment, I found it disappointing. But it's not a bad book.
September 13, 2025
Could not put it down. Peter Godwin writes so eloquently and his command of the English language is outstanding, I literally drowned in his words and made so many dog ears to go back and re-read passages. It is truly compelling and being an expatriate myself and also from the African continent, this book truly resonated with me. Read it, you will be so pleased you did.
September 11, 2025
poignant, beautifully written as always
August 23, 2025
Melanie bookclub ✅
August 20, 2025
A Well written honest and raw depiction of his life, and he didn’t shy from being vulnerable.
I marvelled at his use of words, eloquent, descriptive and his memory recall from past events blew my mind.
A Very thought provoking book
I marvelled at his use of words, eloquent, descriptive and his memory recall from past events blew my mind.
A Very thought provoking book
August 3, 2025
This memoire is so interesting because it is about so many fascinating things; family, identity, purpose, trauma, successful and failed relationships, life, death.
The author was born in Rhodesia before its independence where his mother worked as a medical doctor, raising three children with her husband. The story starts as the author leaves his home in New York to tend to his dying mother along with his sister. The remainder of the book is his recollections of every aspect of his life and his struggle to connect meaning to understand his place.
There writing is superb (the author is a journalist) and his intellect is impressive. The prose is self reflection, history, poetry. I not only leaned about his struggle with identity which is a product of living on three continents, but about scurvy which killed thousands of sailors before figuring out that it was prevented by eating citrus fruit.
Highly, highly recommended. It is journey with taking.
The author was born in Rhodesia before its independence where his mother worked as a medical doctor, raising three children with her husband. The story starts as the author leaves his home in New York to tend to his dying mother along with his sister. The remainder of the book is his recollections of every aspect of his life and his struggle to connect meaning to understand his place.
There writing is superb (the author is a journalist) and his intellect is impressive. The prose is self reflection, history, poetry. I not only leaned about his struggle with identity which is a product of living on three continents, but about scurvy which killed thousands of sailors before figuring out that it was prevented by eating citrus fruit.
Highly, highly recommended. It is journey with taking.
May 1, 2025
The first part of Peter Godwin's memoir contains the lyrical description of the family settling in their weekend breakaway home in Upper West Manhattan. Godwin engages with the natural world and his observation of migratory birds, for example, confirms the strong theme of exile that runs through the memoir. The language he uses sent me to an online dictionary on many an occasion, but I soon became aware that the author’s choosing to use precise and rather unusual words is not pretentiousness so much as respect for the world he describes. Captivating prose is characteristic of Godwin’s writing style, shaped by his upbringing and career that took him to report on war zones and to areas of great human stress, leaving him a citizen of the world who yet struggles to define home.
June 15, 2025
Recommended. This memoir is about sad and hard things, but it's so beautiful and insightful with the quotes and literary references. I frequently had to look up words because of his extensive vocabulary. The author is self-aware, observant, and erudite. He brings together the painful, aching emotions of loss and displacement and the many surprising instances of humour, the latter especially found in his banter with his sister, his recounting of remarks by his sons, his observations of other patients in his mother's hospital room. There is so much in here that it would probably be best to read it twice, which I won't do right now, but maybe later.
February 16, 2025
From Mukiwa through to Exit Wounds so much of what Peter Godwin so beautifully writes reflects my 'white Zimbabwean now living elsewhere' experiences and emotions. Our stories also diverge greatly but where they unreel parallel to one another he nails it.
I also admire a memoir writer who lays themselves wide open for everyone to 'read' - Peter has done this with Exit Wounds, and I feel sad that someone so accomplished and a voice for my culture and generation is struggling as he is.
A great read, peppered with musings and historical anecdotes all of which I found interesting.
I also admire a memoir writer who lays themselves wide open for everyone to 'read' - Peter has done this with Exit Wounds, and I feel sad that someone so accomplished and a voice for my culture and generation is struggling as he is.
A great read, peppered with musings and historical anecdotes all of which I found interesting.
February 18, 2025
Absolutely wonderful
This is a profoundly affecting memoir. It’s impossible to briefly encapsulate all the things it’s about. The death of his mother in London after her life as a doctor in Zimbabwe. The late learning of his Polish Jewish ancestry. The breakdown of a marriage. His life as a war correspondent. His American sons. Godwin is a superb journalist: honest, funny, deep, hugely knowledgeable about many things and a wonderful writer. Kudos to him and may he live in peace. You won’t regret reading this.
This is a profoundly affecting memoir. It’s impossible to briefly encapsulate all the things it’s about. The death of his mother in London after her life as a doctor in Zimbabwe. The late learning of his Polish Jewish ancestry. The breakdown of a marriage. His life as a war correspondent. His American sons. Godwin is a superb journalist: honest, funny, deep, hugely knowledgeable about many things and a wonderful writer. Kudos to him and may he live in peace. You won’t regret reading this.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 65 reviews