BROTHERS UNDER THE SKIN: TRAVELS IN TYRANNY BY CHRISTOPHER IN SOUTH AFRICA

Christopher Hope, prize-winning author and renowned journalist, was six years old when he met his first dictator.  It was Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, friendly neighbour and architect of the brutal apartheid regime of South Africa.  Since then he has observed the cruelties and absurdities of tyranny in many places and among many peoples, most recently in the repeating patterns of repression instigated by Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. Brothers Under The Skin is an impassioned reflection on the all too familiar traits of tyranny: its wild paranoia, its murderous conviction of righteousness, and its inability to concede power, however small.  From Milosovic's Serbia to the killing fields of Matabeleland, Christopher Hope reveals the vainglorious essence of tyranny as being essentially the same, regardless of race, nation or ideology it claims to embody.  Bringing his unique experience and dazzling prose style to bear on the subject, he has produced a disturbing, yet amusing text that reveals the tragic absurdity of one man's lust for power. Soft cover, fair condition.  The cover is scuffed and creased in places.  279 pages.