Fact and fiction in Southern Central Africa: in 1963/4, with Northern Rhodesia on the verge of Independence, two African boys, one Black and one white, set out to make an impossible cross country pilgrimage from Barotseland to Lourenço Marques, home of Southern Africa’s greatest rock ’n roll radio station.
3rd edition
“I first wrote this book many years ago, too fast and too carelessly and in an unsettled state of mind. A few years later, I edited it to correct some historical and musical references. Now, in 2025, I look at the material in a different light and while a great deal of the original stands, I have made a lot of changes, expanding the fact and cutting down on the fiction. “ P.L.
Reviews from Amazon
Highly recommended. This is a perceptive, beautifully-written memoir about a colonial childhood that throws a light on a place – Africa – and time – the sixties – that now seem both exotic and impossibly distanced…. In turns funny, terrifying, exciting and touching, Fishing for Crocodiles is a rollicking adventure that would make a great indie movie. Highly recommended.
Charming, vivid and poignant. This charming, vivid and poignant tale is set in such a time, before the African dive into the waters of the 20th century became such a mighty struggle for survival. Growing up in Africa, as this author apparently did, has enabled him to describe in detail the simpler time and self-reliant life style that has long disappeared from almost all parts of the globe. A simple and sincere relationship with his African playmate, a naive expectation that leads to an incredible journey across a still wild continent that leads to an entirely unexpected and dangerous encounter, all add up to a touching tale of remembrance and, finally, of redemption.
A must read. In the vogue of realistic African story writing made popular by Alexandra Fuller, this is a must read for all who are drawn to the now enlightening continent.
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The 1960’s. Central Africa. The Winds of Change, sweeping down through one of the last great wildernesses on planet earth. Landilane, Black, and Rex, White, not yet teenagers, run away from their home in a remote corner of Northern Rhodesia, on the eve of Zambian Independence, 1964.
Their quest: to meet their idol Sam Cooke who, by all accounts, is to be interviewed on Southern Africa’s primo rock station, LM Radio. Cooke’s iconic song, ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’, has a strange power over them. Their destination: Lourenço Marques (now Maputo), capital city of Mozambique, nestled comfortably on the warm, welcoming shores of the Indian Ocean. They’ll journey down the mighty Zambezi River, through remote and game-filled bundhu, train hopping through neighbouring Southern Rhodesia, into Mozambique and into the hands of the mythical freedom-fighter, Alice N’Karta, fighting for her people’s independence from Portuguese colonial rule.
The journey will force them to confront and come to terms with their ethnic and cultural differences, putting their friendship to a critical stress-test, imposing, unwillingly, a 50 year hiatus to their profound connection. Little do they know that their idol will be shot to death in a Los Angeles motel room before they even arrive in LM.
Nothing will ever be the same.