THE LAST RESORT
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Synopsis
THE LAST RESORT is a remarkable true story about one family in a country under siege, and a testament to the love, perseverance, and resilience of the human spirit.
Born and raised in Zimbabwe, the son of white farmers living through that country’s long and tense transition from colonial rule, Douglas Rogers escaped the dull future mapped out for him by his parents for one of adventure and excitement in Europe and the U.S.
But when Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe launched the violent program to reclaim white-owned land and Rogers’s parents were caught in the cross-fire, everything changed. Owners of Drifters, a famous game farm and backpacker lodge in the eastern mountains that was one of the most popular budget resorts in the country, Lyn and Ros found their home and resort under siege, their friends and neighbors expelled, and their lives in danger. But instead of leaving, as their son pleads them too, they haul out a shotgun and decide to stay.
On returning to the country of his birth, Douglas finds his once orderly and progressive home transformed into something resembling a Marx Brothers romp crossed with Heart of Darkness: Pot has supplanted maize in the fields; hookers have replaced college kids as guests; and soldiers, spies, and teenage diamond dealers guzzle beer at the bar. Beyond the farm gates, meanwhile, rogue politicians, witch doctors, and armed war veterans loyal to President Mugabe circle like hungry lions.
And yet in spite of it all, Rogers’s parents - with the help of friends, farm workers, lodge guests and residents, among them black political dissidents and white refugee farmers - continue to hold on. But can they survive to the end?
In the midst of a nation stuck between its stubborn past and an impatient future, Rogers soon begins to see his parents in an entirely new light: unbowed, with passions and purpose renewed, even heroic. And in the process he learns that the “big story” he had relentlessly pursued his entire adult life as a roving journalist and travel writer, was actually happening in his parents' own backyard.
Evoking elements of The Tender Bar and Absurdistan, The Last Resort is an inspiring coming-of-age tale about home, love, hope, responsibility and redemption. An edgy roller-coaster adventure, it is also a deeply moving story about how to survive a corrupt Third World dictatorship with a little innovation, humor, bribery, and brothel management.
Reviews
"This vibrant, tragic and surprisingly funny book is the best account yet of ordinary life — for blacks and whites — under Mugabe’s dictatorship."
"Zimbabwe in vertiginous decline is the backdrop for Douglas Rogers’s corrosively funny The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe (Harmony), in which Rogers’s parents, among the country’s last remaining white farmers, attract everyone from prostitutes and diamond dealers to their backpacker lodge."
"At first I groaned, oh no, not another memoir by a honky from Umtali,
and then I read all night and loved it."
- Rian Malan, author of My Traitor's Heart
"A gorgeous, open-hearted book. Rogers manages to do the vital work of taking race out of Zimbabwe's story and putting the heart and humanity back into it. A must read for anyone who really wants to understand the extraordinary decency of ordinary Zimbabweans."
- Alexanrda Fuller, author of Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight
"Authentic, disturbing, unusual, hugely funny. This is very different to other 'white boy in Africa' books. Rogers is a sharp observer and a brilliant storyteller."
- Max du Preez, author of Pale Native, Memories of a Renegade Reporter
"Pitch-perfect, undeniably real, and, most importantly, achingly funny, Rogers deftly reminds us that after wiping away tears and even burying the dead a good antidote to the violent, poignant and completely absurd place that Zimbabwe has become is to throw arms wide to the undaunted African sky and simply laugh."
- Wendy Kann, author of CASTING WITH A FRAGILE THREAD: A STORY OF SISTERS AND AFRICA
"With breathtaking talent, wry wit and abundant heart, Douglas Rogers tells the compulsively readable tale of his parents’ daily struggles to hold onto their land in the nightmarish landscape of present day Zimbabwe. With every turn of the page, you fear for the Rogerses survival, as well as the survival of the country they love so much. But even as they face the most difficult of challenges, their indomitable spirit shines through, revealing the ordinary heroism of people in extraordinary circumstances."
- Anne Landsman, author of The Rowing Lesson
“Travelogue, adventure yarn, political intrigue and tragedy, high-wire journalism, The Last Resort is a love story about the author and his homeland, Zimbabwe. She is by turns ineffably beautiful, unspeakably hideous, insanely rich, desperately poor, democratic, brutally autocratic, violent, corrupt and dysfunctional, even though, in person,her people seem to be one and all hard scrabble heroes and survivors. Rogers tries to leave her and doesn't even want to write about her, but in the end her charms are irresistible.
He can't help himself and neither can we.”
- Richard Dooling, author, White Man’s Grave
TRADE PRESS REVIEWS
Born in Zimbabwe, New York-based travel writer Rogers moves between two worlds with wit and grace... Angst, humor, beauty and terror mingle freely in his narrative… This rousing memoir should win over anyone with a taste for exotic can’t-go-home-again stories.(Sept.)
– PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (Starred Review)
…From dollars and diamonds to pot and prostitution, Rogers shows what survival looks like when your government loses its collective mind. Brilliantly funny and wry.
– Colleen Mondor (Aug) – BOOKLIST
A Brooklyn travel writer returns to his South African homeland to rescue the family farm from imminent danger. Eye-opening memoir weaving violent Zimbabwean politics with the camaraderie and fearlessness of a family in crisis. (Aug)
– KIRKUS
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