Zimbabwe's suspension and decision to withdraw from the Commonwealth in November 2003 have confirmed the country's status as an international pariah. There has been steady criticism of President Robert Mugabe and his government in the media but scant appreciation of the ways in which violence and repression emerge from the very nature of state structures in Zimbabwe. Pan-African scholar Horace Campbell's new book posits that it is possible to break with the analysis of implicating individuals and to link murder, mayhem and masculinity to the European ideation system inherited by the post-colonial state.