The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe

In 2008, memoirist and journalist Peter Godwin secretly returned to his native Zimbabwe after its notoriously tyrannical leader, Robert Mugabe, lost an election. The decision was severely risky—foreign journalists had been banned to prevent the world from seeing a corrupt leader's refusal to cede power. Zimbabweans have named this period, simply, The Fear.

Godwin bears witness to the torture bases, the burning villages, the opposition leaders in hiding, the last white farmers, and the …