The Zanzibar Chest: A Memoir of Love and War

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Mesmerizing. . . . A Sweeping, poetic homage to Africa, a continent made vivid by Hartley’s capable, stunning prose.”— Publishers Weekly (starred review) Utterly absorbing. This book tells two stories. The first is Hartley's family history, in particular the story of Peter Davey, a friend of Hartley's dad who 'goes native' in Yemen while working to maintain peace amongst the Sheikhs who live in a rapidly changing world. The second story is that of Hartley's own experiences (at times devastating) working as a foreign news correspondent for Reuters. La sua famiglia ha alle spalle due secoli di storia coloniale in tutti i continenti, fra i suoi avi ci sono militari, funzionari pubblici, tecnici che hanno vissuto e lavorato in Africa, in Asia, nei Caraibi ecc. A work of tremendous candor and vigor. Passionately articulated, The Zanzibar Chest offers a vision of Africa through the eyes of the war reporter that is unsettling, compelling and moving by turns. Reportage, history, family memoir and personal testimony intertwine in a work of passion and intensity to create a book that is impossible to forget.”—Aminatta Forna, author of The Devil that Danced on the Water

I remember how an American dropped his trousers for a group of us at the bar and boasted how he’d lost his left testicle in a Balkans mine blast, which he claimed hadn’t prevented him from seducing a nurse during his recovery in a Budapest hospital.” In the Nineteenth Century, Europeans were attracted to the wealth of the tiny island. It was such an obvious trading entrepot and was one of the few places in Africa that had plenty of cash. It was also helpful that the island climate was more accommodating to Europeans and there were less nasty diseases to afflict them than in most of the rest of the continent. It was a natural hub of civilisations, even if much of the wealth was a by-product of slavery. On those flights I’d look down from the sky at takeoffs and landings and see the silhouette of our little aircraft ripple over pulverized cities, refugee camps, the acetylene-white flashes of antiaircraft fire, and countries rich only in lost hopes and broken dreams. What comes to mind when I think of that time in my life are the words of Isaiah 18, which I’d read in Gideons Bibles I’d found in dozens of seedy hotel rooms where I spent so much of my life on the road: “Woe to the land shadowing with wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia. . . . Go, ye swift messengers, to a nation scattered and peeled, to a people terrible from their beginning hitherto; a nation meted out and trodden down.” That passage makes me think of my circle of friends, the journalists I knew in those years. We were like the swift messengers in Africa. Genizah expert S.D. Goitein, author in 1983 of the multi-volume A Mediterranean Society, had this to say about dower chests in that region:

the saleroom

In between Hartley's experiences, there is a separate story regarding his father's friend, Peter Davey and Davey's murder in 1947. Hartley wanted to tell this story because he inherited Davey's diaries, which his father stored for 50 years in "The Zanzibar Chest." However, I did not feel Davey's story was nearly as compelling as Hartley's, and it didn't really belong in this volume. It is the buyer’s responsibility to advise if there has been any additional transactions (e.g. bidding live in the auction, leaving a hard copy fixed bid, etc.) An epic narrative combining the literary reportage of Ryszard Kapuściński with a historical love story reminiscent of Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient. Remind[s] us that setting up democracies anywhere will fail every time if we ignore non-Western cultures and religious ideology.”— The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Behind his occasional bombast Hartley's desire to belong remains constant. Africa, his lost home, has failed him, so he looks to the fraternity of newsmen instead. He describes his years on the road as some never-to-be-repeated golden age of news. But this is ridiculous, as he later concedes: "Forgotten incidents of history become our unforgettable days." At last, wearying of journalism, he seeks in Davey's story confirmation that he is his forefathers' son.

The book details the author's quest to travel to Yemen and learn as much as possible and see the location that make up his fathers friend's journal, and to learn how and why he died.

Note: Hannam’s Auctioneers Ltd reserves the right to alter these Terms and Conditions without notification to clients. Red paint under brass studs and appliqué plates of this 19th-century “Zanzibar” chest indicates that it likely was used for a dowry. Un vero peccato, una grande delusione, avrebbe potuto essere un'autentica goduria: alla materia trattata darei anche mille stellette, ma al modo come Hartley scrive non se ne può dare più di una. As Hartley finds himself in the midst of war-torn Somalia, Serbia and Rwanda, his writing becomes darker and eventually he cannot distance himself from the horror. My father’s ancestors were Yorkshire farmers. My great-grandparent Hartleys, remembered chiefly for their habit of sitting up in bed together at home in the seaside town of Bridlington and arguing loudly over the morning newspapers, refused even to set foot outside Yorkshire. I sense the Hartleys’ love of home was as important to them as not meddling in the affairs of other peoples overseas. A Hartley was among those who initiated the debate on the abolition of slavery. And David Hartley, a staunch opponent of the American Revolutionary War and a friend of Benjamin Franklin, was Britain’s minister plenipotentiary and signed the Treaty of Paris in the autumn of 1783.

d) Any claim under any Statute must be received in writing by the Auctioneers within ten days of the day of the sale.In his quest for belonging, Hartley intertwines his own war stories with the tale of Peter Davey, a romantic young British officer and friend of his father, who was murdered in Aden in 1947 and whose diaries he finds in his dead father's Zanzibar chest. There are similarities between Davey and Hartley, two white men in savage lands. But Hartley strives for a more poetic connection. He believes Davey's death represented his father's loss of innocence, just as he himself was transformed by Africa's wars. By uncovering the details of Davey's life, he hopes to connect with his father, and so with his forefathers. Mervyn Maciel went on holiday from Kenya to Zanzibar in late 1963. Little did he or his family realise that they had arrived on the idyllic island on the eve of a Revolution and a military coup The title refers to a chest his father had with diaries and journals detailing his fathers work during the last 30 some years of British colonial rule in Africa and Yemen. Truly 5 stars. Such a beautiful, interesting, absorbing book, hard to believe that it didn't win every possible medal/prize for Non-Fiction. I know why it didn't--because it unflinchingly tells the truth about the UN and USA, the UK and their actions in Africa. Hartley, despite being a professional newspaperman, had to work hard to put this book together. Parts of it aren't as smooth as he would have liked, no doubt.