Historical fiction books from Zimbabwe
Recommended historical fiction books (8)
Travel the world without leaving your chair.
If you are into historical fiction here are some historical fiction books from Zimbabwe for the next part of the Read Around The World Challenge.
1.
Description:
Bones is a powerful, heart-rending novel that provides a sensitive evocation of Marita, a farm worker, whose only son joined the freedom fighters in Zimbabwes war of liberation. He does not return after the war and Marita is determined to find him or find out what happened to him. This is perhaps a single clear theme in a landscape where women, particularly the poor and the marginalised, suffer many layers of oppression. Maritas courage and endurance are reconstructed through the memories of those who knew her in a language steep in poetry and Shona idiom. Bones, which won the Noma Award in 19... continue
2.
Butterfly Burning by Yvonne Vera EN
Description:
Butterfly Burning brings the brilliantly poetic voice of Zimbabwean writer Yvonne Vera to American readers for the first time. Set in Makokoba, a black township, in the late l940s, the novel is an intensely bittersweet love story.
3.
Condiciones nerviosas by Tsitsi Dangarembga ES
Description:
Condiciones nerviosas es una de las obras maestras de la literatura africana contemporánea. Tambu, una campesina pobre de Zimbabue, pertenece, como la autora misma, a la generación que, entre la infancia y la primera juventud, asistió al tramo final de las luchas contra el régimen de la minoría blanca que culminan, en 1980, con la formación del primer gobierno negro. La lucha de Tambu por acceder a una buena educación simboliza la trayectoria de una colectividad nacional que conoce cambios profundos en la transición entre las incertidumbres de la lucha contra el colonialismo y las incertidumbr... continue
4.
Description:
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 BOOKER PRIZE* *SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2023 RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE* *LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION* *LONGLISTED FOR THE ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE* *LONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD* From the award-winning author of the Booker Prize finalist We Need New Names, an anthropomorphic blockbuster of a novel that chronicles the fall of an oppressive regime, and the chaotic, kinetic potential for real liberation that rises in its wake. Glory centres around the unexpected fall of Old Horse, a long-serving, tyrannical leader of the fictional country of Ji... continue
5.
Ndima Ndima by Tsitsi Mapepa EN
Description:
From debut Zimbabwean writer Tsitsi Mapepa comes the saga of the four Taha sisters, and the indomitable matriarch who carried her daughters-and her community-through times of drought and violence in their Harare neighborhood. From the red soil of her garden in Southgate 1, a crowded suburb of Harare, Nyeredzi watches the world. She knows not to venture beyond the grasses that fence them off from the bush, where the city's violent criminals and young women claim the night. But on this red soil, she is sovereign. It is here where she learns how to kill snakes, how to fight off a man, and how to ... continue
6.
Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga EN
Description:
A modern classic from the Booker-shortlisted author of This Mournable Body The groundbreaking first novel in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s award-winning trilogy, Nervous Conditions, won the Commonwealth Writers Prize and has been “hailed as one of the 20th century’s most significant works of African literature” (The New York Times). Two decades before Zimbabwe would win independence and ended white minority rule, thirteen-year-old Tambudzai Sigauke embarks on her education. On her shoulders rest the economic hopes of her parents, siblings, and extended family, and within her burns the desire for indepe... continue
7.
This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangarembga EN
Description:
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2020 BOOKER PRIZE A searing novel about the obstacles facing women in Zimbabwe, by one of the country’s most notable authors Anxious about her prospects after leaving a stagnant job, Tambudzai finds herself living in a run-down youth hostel in downtown Harare. For reasons that include her grim financial prospects and her age, she moves to a widow’s boarding house and eventually finds work as a biology teacher. But at every turn in her attempt to make a life for herself, she is faced with a fresh humiliation, until the painful contrast between the future she imagined and her... continue
8.
We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo EN
Description:
A remarkable literary debut--shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize! The unflinching and powerful story of a young girl's journey out of Zimbabwe and to America. Darling is only ten years old, and yet she must navigate a fragile and violent world. In Zimbabwe, Darling and her friends steal guavas, try to get the baby out of young Chipo's belly, and grasp at memories of Before. Before their homes were destroyed by paramilitary policemen, before the school closed, before the fathers left for dangerous jobs abroad. But Darling has a chance to escape: she has an aunt in America. She travels to this ... continue