This is a rare achievement: translation of contemporary francophone African literature into English, and published within Africa, with the aim of promoting greater understanding and links across the continent. The impetus came from the focus on francophone Africa at the Zimbabwe International Book Fair 2001. Supported by the French Embassy, three lecturers at the University of Zimbabwe, assisted by nineteen students, undertook the translations of three short stories. The writers are Seydi Sow from Senegal, Florent Couao-Zotti from Benin, and Abdourahman Ali Waberi from Djibouti. Couao-Zotti's story 'Small Hells on Street Corners', was shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing, 2002.

Fools, Thieves and Other Dreamers: Stories from Francophone Africa

Literature & Fiction

Waberi, Abdourahman A.

Couao-Zotti, Florent

Sow, Seydi

Short Stories & Anthologies

Weaver Pr

Our Broken Dreams: Child Migration in Southern Africa

Politics & Social Sciences

Save The Children

Anthropology

The fifteen stories in Women Writing Zimbabwe offer a kaleidoscope of fresh, moving, and comic perspectives on the way in which events of the last decade have impacted on individuals, women in particular. Several stories (Tagwira, Ndlovu and Charsley) look at the impact that AIDS has on women who become the care-givers, often without emotional or physical support. It is often assumed that women will provide support and naturally make the necessary sacrifices. Brickhill and Munsengezi focus on the hidden costs and unexpected rewards of this nurturing role. Many families have been separated over the last decade. Ndlovu, Mutangadura, Katedza, Mhute and Rheam all explore exile's long, often painful, reach and the consequences of deciding to remain at home. In lighter vein, but with equal sharpness of perception, Gappah, Manyika, Sandi, and Holmes poke gentle fun at the demands of new-found wealth, status and manners. Finally, Musariri reminds us that the hidden costs of undisclosed trauma can continue to affect our lives for years afterwards. All of the writers share a sensitivity of perception and acuity of vision. Reading their stories will enlarge and stimulate our own understanding.

Women Writing Zimbabwe

World Literature

'When George J. George mistook his white Ford Escort for the moon, he knew his time was up.' When Mr George loses his job teaching English at a private secondary school in Bulawayo, 'his pension payout, after forty years of full-time service, bought him two jam doughnuts and a soft tomato.' When he backs his uninsured white Ford Escort into a brand new Mercedes Benz, the out-of-court settlement sees him giving up his house to the complainant, Beauticious Nyamayakanuna, and becoming her domestic servant. Through the prism of this engaging post-colonial role reversal, and spiced with George's lessons on Shakespeare, John Eppel draws down the curtain on one particular white man in Africa. But before it's time to go, George will delight us with the antics of his literature classes; his various arrests - all timed to coincide with the police chief's need for help with essays on Hamlet and A Grain of Wheat; his keen eye for flora and fauna; and the long trek back through the hundred years of his family's Zimbabwean past, as he returns an abandoned child to her home. Eppel has satirized the racial politics of southern Africa in many of his previous novels. In Absent: The English Teacher he turns his gaze inwards for a generous and richly rewarding parody of the land of his birth.

Absent. The English Teacher

Eppel, John

Literary

Like very good dark chocolate this is a delicious novel, with a bitter-sweet flavour. Vimbai is a hairdresser, the best in Mrs Khumalo's salon, and she knows she is the queen on whom they all depend. Her situation is reversed when the good-looking, smooth-talking Dumisani joins them. However, his charm and desire to please slowly erode Vimbai's rancour and when he needs somewhere to live, Vimbai becomes his landlady. So, when Dumisani needs someone to accompany him to his brother's wedding to help smooth over a family upset, Vimbai obliges. Startled to find that this smart hairdresser is the scion of one of the wealthiest families in Harare, she is equally surprised by the warmth of their welcome; and it is their subsequent generosity which appears to foster the relationship between the two young people. The ambiguity of this deepening friendship - used or embraced by Dumisani and Vimbai with different futures in mind - collapses in unexpected brutality when secrets and jealousies are exposed. Written with delightful humour and a penetrating eye, The Hairdresser of Harare is a novel that you will find hard to put down.

The Hairdresser of Harare

Huchu, Tendai

By late 1975, in the détente that followed the coup in Portugal, the guerilla war in Rhodesia was almost at a standstill. But so were the talks about a negotiated settlement. In January 1976, frustrated with the failure of the politicians to make progress, the Zimbabwe People's Army (ZIPA) resumed the war. ZIPA brought together fighters from both of the guerilla forces, ZANLA and ZIPRA. One of its commanders was Wilfred Mhanda, known more famously during the liberation struggle as Dzinashe 'Dzino' Machingura. His story tells of Zipa's bold attempt to provide a more unified, radical and focussed leadership for the struggle at a time of the assassination and arrest of key nationalist leaders, intense nationalist party rivalries, and a range of imperialist interventions in the region. It also provides the most comprehensive description to date of Robert Mugabe's rise to power in ZANU-PF. Dzino is a compelling blend of the personal and the political, and makes an invaluable contribution to the country's written history.

Dzino: Memories of a Freedom Fighter

Biographies & Memoirs

Mhanda, Wilfred

Historical

The history of colonial land alienation, the grievances fuelling the liberation war, and post-independence land reforms have all been grist to the mill of recent scholarship on Zimbabwe. Yet for all that the country's white farmers have received considerable attention from academics and journalists, the fact that they have always played a dynamic role in cataloguing and representing their own affairs has gone unremarked. It is this crucial dimension that Rory Pilossof explores in The Unbearable Whiteness of Being. His examination of farmers' voices - in The Farmer magazine, in memoirs, and in recent interviews - reveals continuities as well as breaks in their relationships with land, belonging and race. His focus on the Liberation War, Operation Gukurahundi and the post-2000 land invasions frames a nuanced understanding of how white farmers engaged with the land and its peoples, and the political changes of the past 40 years. The Unbearable Whiteness of Being helps to explain why many of the events in the countryside unfolded in the ways they did.

The Unbearable Whiteness of Being: Farmers' Voices from Zimbabwe

History

Pilossof, Rory

Africa

Zimbabwe has cast a powerful regional and international shadow since it became independent in 1980 and more recently, through the crises of the first decade of the twenty-first century. The 2000s were a decade of combined political, economic and social crises in Zimbabwe following what had been a relatively successful twenty years of independence since 1980. The scale, depth and severity of the crises evolving since 2000 have been as dramatic as they have been unexpected. While there has been substantial coverage of the internal consequences of Zimbabwe's crises less attention has been paid to its regional and cross-border consequences. In explaining the ongoing processes stemming from the crises, this book looks at three neighboring countries - Mozambique, South Africa and Zambia - to depict how, over time, they have experienced and interpreted events in Zimbabwe, how they have dealt with Zimbabweans entering their territories, and how they have or have not formulated policies and developed practices to cope with the arrival of new and mainly undocumented Zimbabwean immigrants.

In the Shadow of a Conflict: Crisis in Zimbabwe and Its Effects in Mozambique, South Africa and Zambia

This is a comprehensive textbook on Zimbabwean labour law. After detailing the history and purpose of the law, it offers a comprehensive review of contracts of employment, termination, the rights of organisation and association, and collective bargaining. Dispute settlement is discusses within the contexts of the right to strike, conciliation and arbitration, and the role of the courts in adjudication. State employment is treated separately, as it is governed by constitutional law as well as labour law. The book concludes with chapters covering aspects of social security in Zimbabwe, and a discussion on international labour law.

Labour Law in Zimbabwe

Madhuku, Lovemore

Business

The 1990 Commonwealth Writers Regional Prize voted Harvest of Thorns the winner in the Best Book category.
Harvest of Thorns tells the story of Benjamin Tichafa who grows up in Rhodesia in the 1960s. From a conservative, religious family, but exposed to the heady ideas of the black nationalist movements, the young student is pulled in different directions. Isolated and troubled at boarding school, he is provoked into leaving, making his way to Mozambique, and joining the freedom fighters. There, in the crucible of a bitter civil war of liberation, the young man develops into manhood. Returning, hardened, at independence, he feels that little has changed, not least within his own family circumstances, and asks himself what it means to be free in the new Zimbabwe.

Harvest of Thorns

Chinodya, Shimmer

United States

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