This is the Story of Five Marriages and One Gun A British couple wonders at the unknowable city beyond their guarded compound while building walls between themselves. An American suspects his new home is having an insidious effect on his Zimbabwean wife and their young daughter. An enthusiastic young intellectual follows his wife to the city and finds only danger and disillusion. An intelligence officer loses a crucial piece of evidence. It will cost him his marriage, his mistress, and maybe his life. An impoverished taxi driver and his wife find a gun in the cab. From this point on, all their lives are tied to the trigger. In C.B. George's Zimbabwe, the betrayals and conspiracies of the corrupt world are nothing compared to those of marriage.
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.
The Shaping of Water is a character-driven story, following the different but overlapping lives of those who are connected to a ramshackle cottage by a man-made lake in Central Africa during the Liberation wars across its region. The characters are connected in ways they can't imagine by past secrets and future tragedies. Will these connections remain hidden or be uncovered by the characters' decisions and actions? From Patrick the Jesuit, to Andy the Selous Scout; from Marielise, lover of revolutionaries Jo and Luke, to Margaret the banker’s wife; from Natombi and Milimo whose home is drowned by the lake, to Manda, a young woman trying to make her marriage work; the characters are shaped by the rising lake and increasing violence in Africa. The dramatic plot is about damage and survival, passion and uncertainty, adaptation and love, set against a background of escalating war. It tells the story of a world turned upside-down by cynical politicians and reinvented by the courage of ordinary people. Enriched by a detailed knowledge of the history, geography and environment of the region and the variety of its fully realised characters, this book has wide appeal. The novel is imbued with the light, colour and flavour of the landscape, of the lake and of the cottage. The reader will discover new worlds through this riveting novel and remember them long afterwards. The author has spent most of her life in Africa and lived through the events described in this book. Unique in its context, breadth and depth of insight into a particular period of time, in a little-explored place, this book is economic in style, evocative and well written. The Shaping of Water is a good read with characters and a plot that will affect your heart, challenge your ideas, and remain in your memory. It will appeal to intelligent and thoughtful lovers of good fiction, travellers and explorers – both actual and armchair.
The story that you have asked me to tell you does not begin with the pitiful ugliness of Lloyd’s death. It begins on a long-ago day in August when the sun seared my blistered face and I was nine years old and my father and mother sold me to a strange man. Memory, the narrator of Petina Gappah’s The Book of Memory, is an albino woman languishing in Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison in Harare, Zimbabwe, after being sentenced for murder. As part of her appeal, her lawyer insists that she write down what happened as she remembers it. The death penalty is a mandatory sentence for murder, and Memory is, both literally and metaphorically, writing for her life. As her story unfolds, Memory reveals that she has been tried and convicted for the murder of Lloyd Hendricks, her adopted father. But who was Lloyd Hendricks? Why does Memory feel no remorse for his death? And did everything happen exactly as she remembers? Moving between the townships of the poor and the suburbs of the rich, and between past and present, the 2009 Guardian First Book Award–winning writer Petina Gappah weaves a compelling tale of love, obsession, the relentlessness of fate, and the treachery of memory.
During the WestÕs great transition into the post-Colonial age, the country of Rhodesia refused to succumb quietly, and throughout the 1970s fought back almost alone against Communist-supported elements that it did not believe would deliver proper governance. During this long war many heroes emerged, but none more skillful and courageous than Captain Darrell Watt of the Rhodesian SAS, who placed himself at the tip of the spear in the deadly battle to resist the forces of Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo. It is difficult to find another soldierÕs story to equal WattÕs in terms of time spent on the field of battle and challenges faced. Even by the lofty standards of the SAS and Special Forces, one has to look far to find anyone who can match his record of resilience and valor in the face of such daunting odds and with resources so paltry. In the fight he showed himself to be a military maestro. A bush-lore genius, blessed with uncanny instincts and an unbridled determination to close with the enemy, he had no peers as a combat-tracker (and there was plenty of competition). But the Rhodesian theater was a fluid and volatile one in which he performed in almost every imaginable fighting role; as an airborne shock-trooper leading camp attacks, long range reconnaissance operator, covert urban operator, sniper, saboteur, seek-and-strike expert, and in the final stages as a key figure in mobilizing an allied army in neighboring Mozambique. After 12 years in the cauldron of war his cause slipped from beneath him, however, and Rhodesia gave way to Zimbabwe. When the guns went quiet Watt had won all his battles but lost the war. In this fascinating biography we learn that in his twilight years he is now concerned with saving wildlife on a continent where they are in continued danger, devoting himself to both the fauna and African people he has cared so deeply about.
The most up to date and frank account of the developing South African crisis. An analysis of the criminalization of the South African state. A unique perspective on likely future developments there.
