THIS SEPTEMBER SUN
Bryony Rheam
This September Sun won the Best First Book prize at the 2010 Zimbabwe Book Publishers' Association Awards. The book is a chronicle of the lives of two women, the romantic Evelyn and her granddaughter Ellie.
Growing up in post-Independence Zimbabwe, Ellie yearns for a life beyond the confines of small town Bulawayo, a wish that eventually comes true when she moves to the United Kingdom. However, life there is not all she dreamed it to be, but it is the murder of her grandmother that eventually brings her back home and forces her to face some hard home truths through the unravelling of long-concealed family secrets.
Bryony Rheam was born in Kadoma in 1974 and has lived most of her life in and around Bulawayo. She studied for a BA and an MA in English literature in the UK and then spent a year lecturing in Singapore. She returned to Zimbabwe in 2001 where she taught at Peterhouse and Girls' College until her recent move to Ndola, Zambia.
Ama Publishers (Zimbabwe), Paperback 9780797437449; Also available through the African Book Collective.
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BLACK MAMBA BOY
Nadifa Mohamed
Yemen, 1935. Jama is a "market boy," a half-feral child scavenging with his friends in the dusty streets of a great seaport. For Jama, life is a thrilling carnival, at least when he can fill his belly. When his mother—alternately raging and loving—dies young, she leaves him only an amulet stuffed with one hundred rupees. Jama decides to spend her life's meager savings on a search for his never-seen father; the rumors that travel along clan lines report that he is a driver for the British somewhere in the north. So begins Jama's extraordinary journey of more than a thousand miles north all the way to Egypt, by camel, by truck, by train, but mostly on foot. He slings himself from one perilous city to another, fiercely enjoying life on the road and relying on his vast clan network to shelter him and point the way to his father, who always seems just a day or two out of reach.
In his travels, Jama will witness scenes of great humanity and brutality; he will be caught up in the indifferent, grinding machine of war; he will crisscross the Red Sea in search of working papers and a ship. Bursting with life and a rough joyfulness, Black Mamba Boy is debut novelist Nadifa Mohamed's vibrant, moving celebration of her family's own history.
Nadifa Mohamed was born in Hargeisa, Somalia, in 1981 to a merchant marine father and a mother from a politically active family, and was trapped in exile when civil war erupted. She studied history and politics at Oxford, and has worked as a film researcher and scriptwriter.
Picador, paperback, 9780312569235 (paperback: August)
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TINY SUNBIRDS, FAR AWAY
Christie Watson
When their mother catches their father with another woman, twelve year-old Blessing and her fourteen-year-old brother, Ezikiel, are forced to leave their comfortable home in Lagos for a village in the Niger Delta, to live with their mother's family. Without running water or electricity, Warri is at first a nightmare for Blessing. Her mother is gone all day and works suspiciously late into the night to pay the children's school fees. Her brother, once a promising student, seems to be falling increasingly under the influence of the local group of violent teenage boys calling themselves Freedom Fighters. Her grandfather, a kind if misguided man, is trying on Islam as his new religion of choice, and is even considering the possibility of bringing in a second wife.
But Blessing's grandmother, wise and practical, soon becomes a beloved mentor, teaching Blessing the ways of the midwife in rural Nigeria. Blessing is exposed to the horrors of genital mutilation and the devastation wrought on the environment by British and American oil companies. As Warri comes to feel like home, Blessing becomes increasingly aware of the threats to its safety, both from its unshakable but dangerous traditions and the relentless carelessness of the modern world. Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away is the witty and beautifully written story of one family’s attempt to survive a new life they could never have imagined, struggling to find a deeper sense of identity along the way.
"[An] impressive debut…Watson's nuanced portrayal of daily life in Nigeria is peopled with flawed but tenacious characters who fight not only for survival but for dignity. Blessing is a wonderful narrator whose vivid impressions enliven Watson's sensual prose." —Publishers Weekly, starred review
Other Press, paperback, 9781590514665; Quercus Publishing, paperback, 9781849163743
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HOMEMAKING FOR THE DOWN-AT-HEART
Finuala Dowling
Margot is a late-night talk radio host—the perfect job for an outspoken insomniac. Her Kalk Bay home is crowded with wonderfully evocative characters such as her teenage daughter, Pia, her hopelessly romantic yet mostly absent lover Curtis, and the family hanger-on, Mr Morland, a professional psychic. Finally there’s her mother, Zoe, once the acclaimed author of a quirky self-help volume with the same title, but now increasingly senile. In this deeply moving new novel by the award-winning South African poet and novelist, Finuala Dowling, the author examines the fleeting and often so complicated moments of happiness in any household.
Finuala is now a freelance writer, lecturer and editor. Her first volume of poetry, I Flying, was published in 2002 and was awarded the Ingrid Jonker Prize in 2004. In 2003 she was the co-winner of the Sanlam Poetry Prize for her manuscript Doo-wop Girls of the Universe. Her first novel, What Poets Need, was published in 2005. She also writes stage plays and cabarets, and has won the Spier/PANSA Audience Award for Bungee Writing Finals (2002).
Kwela, paperback, 9780795703201
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