BOOK REVIEW | Exit Wounds

A Story of Love, Loss and Occasional Wars

By Peter Godwin

When she turned ninety, my mother sprang a final surprise on us. She started speaking in the voice of a stranger.

Suffering and celebrating the relationships we have

Peter’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 apartment, her accent having overnight become posher than the Queen’s. Unsentimental, fiercely stubborn and at times hilarious, she finally drops her guard, losing all fear of conflict to become the family provocateur.

While confronting the revelations of what his family was – and wasn’t – and the stoicism that sometimes threatened to destroy them, Peter also mourns the ending of his long marriage. At this point of rupture and healing, Peter reflects on his family’s legacy of exile and their tenuous hold on home.

In Exit Wounds: A Story of Love, Loss and Occasional Wars, Peter Godwin considers, with both tenderness and candour, the life of émigrés, exiles and refugees, and grieves the many losses that make life both magnificent and unbearable. He brings us into the spaces that make us question, suffer and celebrate the relationships we have among family and friends, and the healing of our own wounds.

About the author

Peter Godwin was born and raised in Zimbabwe. 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 correspondent, reporting from more than 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 has taught writing at Columbia, Princeton, and the New School, and was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship. From 2012-15 he served as president of the PEN American Center. He is an Orwell fellow and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.