Travel Light, Move Fast

By: Alexandra Fuller

Narrated by: Alexandra Fuller

From best-selling author Alexandra Fuller, the utterly original story of her father, Tim Fuller, and a deeply felt tribute to a life well lived

Six months before he died in Budapest, Tim Fuller turned to his daughter: "Let me tell you the secret to life right now, in case I suddenly give up the ghost. You wouldn't want me taking all this wisdom with me to the grave." Then he lit his pipe, and stroked his dog Harry's head. Harry put his paw on his lap and they sat there the two of them, one man and his dog, keepers to the secret of life. "Well?" she asked. "Nothing comes to mind quite honestly, Bobo", he said, with some surprise. "Now that I think about it, maybe there isn't a secret to life. What do you think, Harry?" Harry gave Dad a look of utter agreement. He was a very superior dog. "Well, there you have it", Dad said.

After her father's sudden death, Alexandra Fuller realizes that if she is going to weather his loss, she will need to become the parts of him she misses most. So begins Travel Light, Move Fast, the unforgettable story of Tim Fuller, a self-exiled British black sheep who moved to Africa to fight in the Rhodesian War before settling as a banana farmer in Zambia. A man who preferred chaos to predictability, to revel in promise rather than wallow in regret, and was more afraid of becoming bored than of getting lost, he taught his daughters to live as if everything needed to happen altogether, all at once - or not at all. Now in the wake of his death, Fuller internalizes his lessons with clear eyes, and celebrates a man who swallowed life whole.

A master of time and memory, Fuller moves seamlessly between the days and months following her father's death as she and her mother return to his farm with his ashes and contend with his overwhelming absence, and her childhood spent running after him in southern and central Africa. Writing with reverent irreverence of the rollicking grand misadventures of her mother and father, bursting with pandemonium and tragedy, Fuller takes their insatiable appetite for life to heart. Here, in Fuller's Africa, is a story of joy, resilience, and vitality, from one of our finest writers.

©2019 Alexandra Fuller (P)2019 Recorded Books

Critic reviews

"Listeners will feel as if they're having an intimate chat with acclaimed memoirist Alexandra Fuller.... Fuller smoothly modulates the tone and pitch of her soft, lilting voice to evoke the spirit and attitude of every person she includes in her accounts." (AudioFile Magazine)

Loved listening to this after don’t let’s go to the dogs tonight

Loved listening to this after don’t let’s go to the dogs tonight it was great with many funny antidotes

Rich with Insight & Detail

What's more, it is a powerful testament to continuity of life within familiar world after deep grief - balanced with humor and storytelling in a non-standard living (in the western world) environment . . .

A funny, poignant, family history, expertly narrated

I love the writing of Alexandra Fuller. I think this may be her best book yet she did a fantastic job of narration of her own work in this book, it deals with grief, loss, the complexity of family relationships. I highly recommend this book.

Fuller's Best Work Yet

An incredible memoir, insightfully unpacked & intentional. Fuller never loses the raw emotions of life.

A Memoir Like No Other

I love Alexandra Fullers books. They are beautifully, poignantly, heart-wrenchingly close-to-the-bone. Travel Light, Move Fast is all of this and more. To say Fuller's life has been extraordinary is an understatement. As a child she lived through the civil war in then Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. Her parents have a zest for an off-the-grid, somewhat untethered life and the more they pay the price for living this way - the more certain they are that they want it that way. Fuller's narration is perfection - her imitation (is that the right word?) of her mother is fantastic. Listening to Fuller read her own words makes me feel like I am making camp in the African bush, sitting by a campfire, with the sunsetting "orange and pink" - the way Fuller describes it - and listening to one of the great storytellers of our time. I cannot recommend this audible book more.