Douglas Rogers | |
---|---|
Born | |
Occupation(s) | Journalist, travel writer, memoirist |
Notable credit | Author of The Last Resort (2009) [2] |
Spouse | Grace Cutler [1] |
Douglas Rogers (born 11 November 1968) is a Zimbabwean journalist, travel writer, and memoirist.
Rogers was born and raised in Umtali, Rhodesia [1] to Lyn, a lawyer, and Rosalind, a drama teacher. He grew up on heavily fortified chicken and grape farms during the Rhodesian Bush War, with his three sisters and parents. He survived a car crash when he was 11 years old; the car had sped off a cliff in the Nyanga mountains, and a female passenger was killed. [2]
He attended Chancellor Junior School and Mutare Boys High, and later boarded at Prince Edward School in Harare. [2] [1] After graduating, with a journalism degree, from Rhodes University in South Africa, he was a city reporter for a Johannesburg newspaper,[ which? ] and completed freelance editing assignments for Radio 702 and other media outlets. After moving to London in 1994, he published several feature pieces in newspapers such as The Independent . His first travel piece was published by the Sunday Telegraph in 1997. He has also written extensively for The Daily Telegraph , The Guardian , and Travel + Leisure . [1]
In 2003, Rogers moved to the United States, on a media visa sponsored by fellow Zimbabwean and Telegraph travel editor, Graham Boynton.[ citation needed ] Rogers currently teaches travel writing at the Gotham Writers Workshop. [1]
Rogers currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife Grace Cutler, [1] a television news producer from New Jersey,[ citation needed ] and their children. [1]
In 2009, [3] Rogers published a part-memoir, part-travelogue, The Last Resort, concerning his parents' struggle to stay afloat in modern-day Zimbabwe, coping with inflation, and warding off land invasions.
He also describes meeting several of the employees, and short- and long-term tenants who stayed in his parents' holiday cottages before and after the tourism industry broke down. The residents include a mercenary named Mac, evicted white farmers, prostitutes and a brothel manager, a descendant of Andries Pretorius, a former captain of the Rhodesian rugby team who is related to F. W. de Klerk, diamond dealers, as well as a nurse who assisted in the theatre as Christiaan Barnard performed the world's first ever heart transplantation. Another resident is the brother of Abel Muzorewa, who briefly was Prime Minister of Zimbabwe Rhodesia.
The Sunday Times praised the book as it "captures the rich humanity – the friendship, bravery, stoicism and unfailing humour – of the millions of black and white Zimbabweans." The reviewer continued to describe the book as "utterly engrossing; a vivid chronicle of the disintegration of a post-colonial nation, and the rebirth of a multiethnic African society." [4] The Daily Telegraph reviewer felt the memoir stands apart from its counterparts: "What distinguishes Douglas Rogers's book from others is that there is a genuine narrative thread to his story, the characters are interesting and well observed, and the author's humanity and integrity is consistently on display." [5]
In 2010, the book won the British Guild of Travel Writers award for Best Narrative Travel Book [6] and was nominated for the 2011 Dolman Best Travel Book Award.
Rhodesia, officially from 1970 the Republic of Rhodesia, was an unrecognised state in Southern Africa from 1965 to 1979. During this fourteen-year period, Rhodesia served as the de facto successor state to the British colony of Southern Rhodesia, and in 1980 it became modern day Zimbabwe.
Ian Douglas Smith was a Rhodesian politician, farmer, and fighter pilot who served as Prime Minister of Rhodesia from 1964 to 1979. He was the country's first leader to be born and raised in Rhodesia, and led the predominantly white government that unilaterally declared independence from the United Kingdom in November 1965 in opposition to their demands for the implementation of majority rule as a condition for independence. His 15 years in power were defined by the country's international isolation and involvement in the Rhodesian Bush War, which pitted the Rhodesian Security Forces against the Soviet- and Chinese-funded military wings of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU).
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Douglas Archibald Hamilton Ritchie was a Rhodesian dentist and politician. Born in the Colony of Jamaica to British parents, his family moved to the United Kingdom in his youth. After serving in the Royal Air Force during World War II, he moved to Southern Rhodesia and practised dentistry. He soon became one of the leading dentists in Rhodesia, and was elected to the Medical Council of Rhodesia in 1958. He entered politics in the 1960s, joining Rhodesian Front and representing the Salisbury suburb of Borrowdale as a member of parliament from 1965 to 1979. In the years following Zimbabwe's independence and the demise of Rhodesia, he emigrated to South Africa and engaged in general practice, dying there in 1999.
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