Peter Godwin

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Peter Godwin is an award-winning author, journalist, screenwriter, documentary, filmmaker and former human rights lawyer.


Background

Godwin was born on 4 December 1957 and was raised in Southern Rhodesia now Zimbabwe. His mother is of English descent and is a former hospital doctor. His father was an engineer and is of Polish Jewish ancestry. Godwin is married to Joanna Coles, the couple has 3 children namely Thomas ,Hugo and Holly. Godwin and his family resides in Upper Westside, Manhattan ,USA.

Education

He studied law and International relations at Cambridge and Oxford.

Career

Godwin has reportedly worked as a foreign correspondent in Africa and Eastern Europe for The Sunday Times of London. He was founding presenter and writer of Assignment/Correspondent, BBC TV's premier foreign affairs program. He now lives in Manhattan and contributes regularly to National Geographic, New York Times magazine, and BBC Radio, among others.[1]

After practicing human rights law in Zimbabwe, he is said to have became a foreign and war correspondent, and has reported from over 60 countries, including wars in Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Somalia, Congo, Ivory Coast, Sudan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Kashmir and the last years of apartheid in South Africa.

He served as East European correspondent and Diplomatic correspondent for the London Sunday Times, and chief correspondent for BBC television's flagship foreign affairs program, Assignment (now Correspondent), making documentaries from such places as Cuba, Panama, Indonesia, Pakistan, Spain, Northern Ireland, the Philippines, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, the Baltics, and the Balkans as it descended into war. His film, The Industry of Death, about the sex trade in Thailand, won the gold medal for investigative film at the New York Film Festival.

He also wrote and co-presented a three part series 'Africa Unmasked' for Britain's Channel Four. He has written for a wide array of magazines and newspapers including Vanity Fair, National Geographic, New York Times magazine, Time, and Newsweek, the Observer (London) and the Guardian (London.)

He is the author of five non fiction books: 'Rhodesians Never Die' - The Impact of war and Political Change on White Rhodesia c.1970 - 1980 (with Ian Hancock), Wild at Heart: Man and Beast in Southern Africa (with photos by Chris Johns and foreword by Nelson Mandela), The Three of Us - a New Life in New York (with Joanna Coles) and Mukiwa, which he received the George Orwell prize and the Esquire-Apple-Waterstones award. His latest book is When a Crocodile Eats the Sun - a Memoir of Africa.

He has taught writing at the New School, Princeton and Sarah Lawrence College. ”[2]

Books

  • Industry of Death

Godwin's film The Industry of Death (1993) was an investigation of Thailand's sex industry.

  • Mukiwa

In 1997, Godwin published Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa. A memoir about growing up in Southern Rhodesia in the 1960s and 1970s during the Rhodesian Bush War, it was described by the Boston Globe as "devastatingly brilliant" and “[o]ne of the best memoirs to come out of Africa.”[14]

  • When a Crocodile Eats the Sun

In 2006, his second memoir, When a Crocodile Eats the Sun, was published.[15] It details the ebbing of his father's life, set to the backdrop of modern-day Zimbabwe, and his discovery of his father's Polish Jewish roots.

  • The Fear

Godwin's book, The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe (2011),[16] chronicles the systematic campaign of murder and torture unleashed by Zimbabwe's autocratic ruler following his defeat at the polls. Godwin was interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air (NPR) in March 2011 about the situation in Zimbabwe since the 2008 general election.[17]

The Fear was selected as the best book of 2011 by The New Yorker, The Economist, and Publishers Weekly.

  1. Review of Books, , Published: , Retrieved:12 December 2017
  2. Columbia Education The Herald, Published:18 November 2015, Retrieved:13 December 2017]]

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