When a Crocodile Eats the Sun. By Peter Godwin. Little, Brown and Company. $24.99. 341 pages

Peter Godwin's new book, "When a Crocodile Eats the Sun," is part personal memoir, part family history and part examination of a country's slide into disaster.

If there's any theme that unites these parts, it's that of frailty _ human and national.

There's the physical frailty of Godwin's father and mother, a proud couple who nonetheless are aging and suffering health problems. There's the frailty of their adopted country, Zimbabwe, whose leader, Robert Mugabe, has turned toward an authoritarianism that has impoverished his people, leading many to turn to criminality so they can survive.

And then, there's the frailty of the author himself, who is torn in many ways about his identity as a white African who spends much of his life living in the West. The revelation that Godwin's father was not originally an Englishman, but rather a Polish Jew who masked his history, only adds to Godwin's identity crisis.

"Crocodile" is a bleak, but necessary read. The title refers to an ancient African belief that a mystical crocodile causes the solar eclipse. Mugabe is the real-life crocodile in the book; though always distant, his policies cast their shadow throughout the tale and the lives portrayed.

Godwin, a freelance journalist who frequently gets Africa assignments as a way to see his parents, chronicles in vivid detail the gruesome changes in Zimbabwe as Mugabe's policies on transferring ownership of white-owned farms to blacks take effect. He also describes the toll that AIDS has taken on the population, and the ineffectiveness of the government opposition in changing policies for the better.

The most tender moments, however, are reserved for his parents, and their refusal to leave Zimbabwe even as the country falls apart around them. It's the details _ such as the difficulty in obtaining adequate medical care for his mother when she needs her hip replaced _ that bring to life the consequences of unchecked power.

Godwin also makes efforts to learn more about his father's true history, tracking down details of what happened to the rest of his father's family during the Holocaust. It's clear he doesn't quite know what to feel about his newly revealed Jewish heritage, though he does find some parallels with the life he has known.

He feels unable to bear the burden of colonialism, leading him to ponder turning his back on Africa and to muse, "A white in Africa is like a Jew everywhere _ on sufferance, watching warily, waiting for the next great tidal swell of hostility."

At times, the book's various elements are woven together clumsily. Nonetheless, the structural deficiencies pale considering what is revealed about life in Zimbabwe.