Index

Writing Now: More Stories from Zimbabwe
Edited by Irene Staunton
304 pp
ISBN 0 77922 043 X

Book offers rich collection of short stories
The Herald
October 15, 2005

Reviewer: Memory Chirere

Weaver Press has made a double literary record within twenty-four months. They have just published and launched a multi-authored collection of short stories in English called Writing Now, a sequel to Writing Still of 2003.

For over a decade now, Zimbabwean publishers have radically shifted from single author short story collections to multi-authored ones.

Under the current economic challenges, it appears to be convenient for publishers to capture various voices in one book. Besides, there is happily the presence towards democratising space through having dialoguing voices. Meanwhile, writers are offered opportunity to practice and experiment with form. With Writing Now, as with Writing Still, one realises that there is now fast growing community of local short-story writers.

The twenty-eight authors in this collection, strictly contributing a single story apiece, represent a cross-section of Zimbabwean writing society. Charles Mungoshi, John Eppel, William Saidi and Shimmer Chinodya come from the old generation and they contributed to Writing Still. Ignatius Mabasa, Stanley Mupfudza, Chiedza Musengezi and Clement Chihota are some of the writers who are gradually becoming prominent.

The likes of Lawrence Hoba, Adrian Ashley and Ethel Kabwato are some of the new voices in the anthology. Race and gender are well represented and the biography of each author is a special story within story. There is, for example, here a ‘self-taught writer’ and there ‘the mother of three wonderful children’ or ‘a latter-day wandering minstrel’.

In a country where only Chinodya seems able to publish annually, the old griots like Chingono have a chance for a brief second coming. After a long period of silence, it was rewarding to read Charles Mungoshi’s tightly compressed piece where the soul wanders and matters out finally like a blooming flower of spring. As to be expected in this ‘crowd’ there are a few weak stories that are as predictable as the rising sun. They carry usual Zimbabwean social stereotypes. Some are overwritten and their seams burst with agony.

There will be a debate on whether Writing Now has maintained both the substance and the high craftsmanship of Writing Still. But the many well-written stories here do cover up very adequately. Brian Chikwava’s ‘Zesa Moto Muzhinji’ is a story to look out for. If it doesn’t win another Caine or similar prize somebody must be sleeping on the job. Chikwava has an eye for ironic detail and sympathy for people that is outstanding. But then any prize might just go to Rory Kilalea. If you don’t shed tears when you finish his ‘Unfinished Business’ then forget it, you will never ever cry again.

Kilalea’s sensitive journalist is one of the few freelance journalists who will look only for a true story on Zimbabwe to send abroad. This is by far the most effortlessly written piece in this collection. But the exciting Shona novelist, Ignatius Mabasa, could be the biggest surprise entry in this short story collection. His ‘Delicious Monstalia’ proves that much as he can mesmerise with longer prose, Mabasa can also write the short story with ‘a spirit of place.’

Talking about spirits, Mabasa’s long time friend, Stanley Mupfudza could be Zimbabwe’s answer to Isabel Allende. His ‘Forever Haunted by Rita’s Eyes’, and many other stories published elsewhere, is evidence that Mupfudza should now be given opportunity in one single author collection. He is one writer who can bring you close to so many other unseen communities in you.

At some point in this ‘feast’ one begins to look for a story that is ‘just different’ and in that mood one cannot fail to notice Clement Chihota’s ‘St Augustine.’ This is in many ways a poet’s story. It begins with ‘Chorombo died at the prime of his life, and stupidly too.’ Chihota and maybe Nyamufukudza of ‘If God was a Woman’ are some of the few Zimbabwean writers who have tried and succeeded with the essay short story. Here the writer picks a theory or an argument and the story becomes an essay and later, a story again. Much of this is found in Jorge Luis Borges especially in Ficciones.

Most of these stories have the current economic challenges in Zimbabwe as their backdrop. But from Hoba’s discerning child-narrator, Chinodya’s ‘fallen’ man, Chingono’s kachasu drinkers, to Mungoshi’s lonely Chizuva, these stories are either blessed with humour or a near surreal hope.

In her loneliness, for instance Mungoshi’s Chizuva realises that ‘she has learnt to distance herself from her sorrows and miseries and that viewed from a distance, even the most sorrowful and painful memories glow with a mysterious light of their own, and then you find yourself singing.’

Irene Staunton and Weaver Press have been long an example of good selection and editing in Zimbabwe. Bonus Musaemura Zimunya, a leading Zimbabwean poet who was guest of honour at the book launch last Tuesday pointed out that we are fast running short of editors who have literature at heart. “I know of managers in publishing who have never sat down to read what their editors recommend for publishing,” he lamented.

© The author/publisher

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