The Zanzibar Chest

An examination of colonialism and its consequences. “A sweeping, poetic homage to Africa, a continent made vivid by Hartley’s capable, stunning prose” ( Publishers Weekly ). In his final days, Aidan Hartley’s father said to him, “We should have never come here.” Those words spoke of a colonial legacy that stretched back through four generations of one British family. From a great-great-grandfather who defended British settlements in nineteenth-century New Zealand, to his father, a colonial offic