Five of the best books about Zimbabwe

Panashe Chigumadzi is a Zimbabwean-born novelist and essayist. Raised in South Africa, she is the author of Sweet Medicine (2015), which won the 2016 K. Sello Duiker Literary Award. She is the founding editor of Vanguard magazine, a platform for young black women coming of age in post-apartheid South Africa. A contributing editor to the Johannesburg Review of Books, her work has featured in titles including The Guardian, The New York Times, Transition, Chimurenga, Washington Post and Die Ziet. These Bones Will Rise Again (June 2018) is her first book to publish in the UK.

One of five of the best books about Zimbabwe Chigumadzi tagged at the Guardian:

Novuyo Rosa Tshuma’s epic satire House of Stone (2018) is driven by one Zamani’s almost pathological desire to replace the missing son of the Mlambo family. In Tshuma’s beautiful interweaving of personal and national history, we learn of successive generations burdened by sins of their fathers. In Zamani’s desperation for family, rooting and history, it is not hard to miss Zimbabwe’s own constant search for “Fathers of the Nation”.

Read about the other books on the list.

Also see Petina Gappah's top ten books about Zimbabwe.

--Marshal Zeringue