Waiting for the Rain

Born into a farming family in 1947, Charles Mungoshi was raised in the Chivhu area of Zimbabwe. After leaving school, he worked with the Forestry Commission before joining Textbook Sales. From 1975 to 1981 he worked at the Literature Bureau as an editor, and at Zimbabwe Publishing House for the next five years. In 1985-87 he was Writer in Residence at the University of Zimbabwe, and since then he has worked as a free-lance writer, script writer and editor.

Charles Mungoshi has written novels and short stories in both Shona and English, as well as two collections of children's stories, Stories from a Shona Childhood and One Day Long Ago (Baobab Books, 1989 and 1991); the former won him the Noma Award. He has also continued to write poetry and has one published collection: The Milkman doesn't only deliver Milk (Baobab Books, 1998). He has won the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa region) twice, in 1988 and 1998, for two collections of short stories: The Setting Sun and the Rolling World (Heinemann, 1987) and Walking Still (Baobab Books, 1997). Two of his novels: Waiting for the Rain (Heinemann 1975) and Ndiko kupindana kwa mazuva (Mambo Press, 1975) received International PEN awards.