Before The Knife

What we need, wrote Franz Kafka, are books that affect us like some grievous misfortune, like the death of one whom we loved more than ourselves. Carolyn Slaughter's Before the Knife is such a book ... Slaughter's bravery has resulted in a book so searing and powerful that words cannot easily do it justice. It must, simply, be read.

Evening Standard

Hypnotic... deeply moving and disturbing... For those willing to brave the dark without a candle, illumination lies ahead.

The Sunday Times

Painful, tragic family saga... a brave book, beautifully written and full of vivid imagery...I read it at a breathless sitting.

Daily Mail

Shows the tragic and lasting consequences of a childhood blighted by fear and hate...writes with lyrical imprecision about the primal innocence and beauty of the Arfican way of life.

Sunday Telegraph

Her language is powerful, visceral... she forcefully conveys that jittery, powerful, intoxicating thing - that thing of Africa, that thing that, once you love it, you don't escape.

Independent

Written with such beauty, courage and truthfulness that it will rank with other masterpieces about life in Africa.

The Times

I greatly admired not so much the bravery of this memoir, though it is brave, as the sheer passion she lets rip. You can feel her rage and her misery and her desperation as tangible things, keeping pace with her love for Africa. How rare for a child to have had such appreciation of the country she's in, seeing its beauty, feeling its spirit

Margaret Forster