In 1972, when Alexandra Fuller was two years old, her parents finally abandoned their English life and returned to what was then Southern Rhodesia, and to the beginnings of a civil war.

By the time she is eight, the war is in full swing; her parents veer from being determined farmers to blind drunk, while Alexandra and her sister, the only survivors of five children, alternately take up target practice and sing Rod Stewart numbers from unbleached rocks.

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight is about living through a civil war; about losing children and losing that war - and realising that the side you have been fighting for may well be the wrong one. Unflinching, beautifully written, and at times extremely funny, Alexandra Fuller's book is one of the most honest memoirs of a childhood to be found in contemporary writing.