Chapters 1-5 Summary and Analysis

Don't Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight is Alexandra Fuller's memoir of growing up in revolutionary Africa from 1969 to 2002. The story is as vivid, colorful and full of life as the African continent. It is a tale of a young girl learning to strip a machine gun and run a farm, dealing with racism, revolution and alcoholic parents, all under the blazing African sun.

In Rhodesia, 1975, young Alexandra "Bobo" Fuller must not wake her parents up by creeping into their room at night. Mum and Dad sleep with loaded guns on the floor beside their beds, and may accidentally shoot the six-year-old. Bobo is more worried about being shot on purpose, either by her parents or by rebels in the nearby hills. Mum treats the black Africans on the farm with contempt, although she surrounds herself with at least...