Peter Godwin

Award-winning author, foreign correspondent and documentary-maker Peter Godwin talks about his new memoir about grief, family secrets, marriage breakup, parenthood, mental health, PTSD and how our scars shape us.

Godwin found himself reflecting on his early life in Zimbabwe as his mother lay dying in a bed in London. He says he has spent his life missing his Zimbabwean childhood. He looks back at his time as a conscript in the Rhodesian army, writing about conflict in Africa and elsewhere in the world, and settling in New York with his English wife and family. Godwin explains how his mother’s final months led him to come to terms with everything his family was and wasn’t, including the secrets they had kept from one another.

Godwin is author of non-fiction books including Mukiwa, winner of the George Orwell Prize, When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa, winner of the Borders Original Voices Award, and The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe. He is a former president of PEN America Center and teaches writing at Wesleyan and Columbia universities.