House of Stone

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Blue mountains, golden fields, gin and tonics on the terrace—once it seemed like the most idyllic place on earth. By August 2002, however, Marondera, Zimbabwe, had transformed into a bloody battleground. One fateful morning, Nigel Hough, one of the few remaining white farmers, received devastating news: a crowd of war veterans demanded he surrender his homestead. The mob ignited a fire and dragged him to an outhouse, where he was confronted by his family's beloved nanny, Aqui. “Get out or we’ll kill you,” she warned. “There is no place for whites in this country.” Christina Lamb reveals this astonishing saga while reporting clandestinely on Zimbabwe, tracing the brutal civil war, independence, and the Mugabe years through the lives of two individuals on opposing sides. Despite being born just miles apart, their upbringings were worlds apart; while Nigel enjoyed cricket and flying, Aqui grew up in a mud hut, struggling for basic necessities. “They had cars and went shopping in South Africa. We didn’t have food and had to walk an hour each way to fetch water,” she recalls. This narrative is based on remarkable interviews with the white farmer and black nanny, set against the backdrop of Zimbabwe's tumultuous history and the descent of Robert Mugabe, once a respected nationalist leader.