The Book of Memory is a humorous, insightful tale about a woman on the periphery of two cultures. It is filled with symbolism, metaphor and meaning, uncoiling itself to you like the water spirit that lurks through most of the novel.
Tag Archives | Books
A tribute to Doris Lessing, Zimbabwean writer
Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature and author of The Grass is Singing, has recently died, and it would be amiss not to mark it here. Lessing was, in my eyes, one of Rhodiesia’s (and now Zimbabwe’s) literary greats. The Grass is Singing was Lessing’s debut novel, set in 1940s Rhodesia, about […]
Fortunate: Book Review
Book overview: Fortunate by Andrew JH Sharp Genre: Fiction Quick Summary: A Welsh doctor finds herself running away from home at the age of 28. She’s running to Zimbabwe: a place she barely knew existed until a patient asked her to fulfil an important mission there. As she becomes more embroiled in events in Zimbabwe, […]
We Need New Names: Book Review
Although this is a travel blog, I hope it’s a place that gives a more rounded picture of Zimbabwe, avoiding compartmentalizing it into “that pariah African state” or “that beautiful African wilderness”. For this reason, stories about literature, art and culture are on this blog too – to flesh out the image of Zimbabwe. I have […]
Petina Gappah and Alexandra Fuller at The Book Café
If I could make everyone in the world – whether white or black, Zimbabwean or non-Zimbabwean, scientist or artist – read two books about Zimbabwe, it would be Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller and An Elegy for Easterly by Petina Gappah. It falls to reason, then, that I would also try to make everyone in […]
Out of Shadows: Book Review
Book overview: Out of Shadows by Jason Wallace Genre: Fiction Great Zimbabwe Guide summary: Plunges you into the wounded psyche of Zimbabwe as it might have been 25 years ago. Do read it: if you want to get another perspective of the racial struggles of pre- and post-Independence Zimbabwe; and to help put current-day events […]
