Publisher: Weaver Press, Zimbabwe
Pages: 236
Year: 2006
Category: Contemporary Fiction, Fiction Classics, Literature
Dimensions: 216 x 140 mm
Strife is the Winner of the 2007 Noma Award for Publishing in Africa.
Strife is a rich and densely written novel that provides a dark exposé of the tension between modernity and tradition, and deep insights into culture in Zimbabwe in the 21st century. Chinodya explores the powerful draw that conflicting ideologies exercise over an emerging middle-class that at once yearns for autonomy and unconsciously desires the irresponsibility of an all-pervading destiny.
Tracing the Gwanagara’s roots back over a century, Chinodya interweaves past and the present, juxtaposing incidents never forgotten or resolved, revealing how memory becomes an actor in lived time. A large family grows up in Gweru. Their father aspires to be an enlightened Christian man; he sees his children through school and college where they do well. But as adults, they are struck by illness. Who is to blame? Who is to cure these ailments? What wrongs have they committed to offend the ancestors? How can atonement be made? Can education, science and medicine provide any solution? Their mother, the moon huntress, seeks out the answers and the cures in traditional beliefs and customs.
Price range: £21.00 through £23.00
About the author
Shimmer
Chinodya was born in 1957 in Gweru, the second child in a large, happy
family. He studied English Literature and Education at the University of
Zimbabwe. After a spell teaching and with curriculum development, he
earned an MA in Creative Writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (USA).
His first novel, Dew in the Morning, was published in 1982. This was
followed by Farai’s Girls (1984), Child of War (under the pen name B.
Chirasha, 1986), Harvest of Thorns (1989), Can We Talk and other
stories (1998), Tale of Tamari (2004), Chairman of Fools (2005), Strife
(2006), Tindo’s Quest (2011), Chioniso and other stories (2012) and
Harvest of Thorns Classic: A Play (2016). His work appears in numerous
anthologies. He has also written educational texts, training manuals,
radio and film scripts, including the script for the feature film,
Everyone’s Child. He has won many awards for his work, including the
Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa Region) for Harvest of Thorns, a
Caine Prize shortlist for Can we Talk and the NOMA award for publishing
in Africa for Strife. He has won awards on many occasions from ZIWU,
ZBPA and NAMA. He has also received many fellowships abroad and from
1995 to 1997 was Distinguished Dana Professor in Creative Writing and
African Literature at the University of St Lawrence in upstate New York.
Related books
The Vacuum Chamber
Price range: £20.00 through £21.00
