Notes

278 p
'If I stood you in front of a man, pressed a gun into your palm and told you to squeeze the trigger, would you do it?' 'No, Sir, No way!' 'What if I then told you we'd gone back in time and his name was Adolf Hitler? Would you do it then?' No, this isn't a book about Nazi Germany; it's a book set in Zimbabwe in the 1980s, but ultimately it asks the question, is it ever right to kill an individual for the greater good? A young English boy, Robert Jacklin, finds himself enrolled in a Zimbabwean boarding school just after the war for independence. Robert Mugabe has come to power offering hope, land and freedom to black Africans. The school is still predominately white with a few token black pupils but the racial tension is bubbling beneath the surface. Jacklin makes friends with Nelson, a black boy in his class but this quickly brings him to the attention of the bullying white supremist in the class - Ivan Hascott. But when Jacklin has to spend half-term with Ivan and his family on their farm, he starts to sympathise with the colonial whites as he witnesses the compulsory land seizures of Mugabe's government. Back at school Jacklin then dumps his black friends for Ivan, partly in an attempt to belong. But then the rug is suddenly pulled from under him as he realises how dark and sinister Ivan has become. Nelson disappears, as do other local black children, and it slowly dawns on him, and the reader, what Ivan is capable of. With an imminent visit by Robert Mugabe to the school, Jacklin realises that Ivan plans to assassinate the black leader. But this novel leaves us with the moral dilemma - with hindsight should Jacklin have killed Ivan or let Ivan kill Robert Mugabe?