We wrap up book news for our readers in our Book Digest feature. Today our focus is books from Joe Khamisi, Tete Loeper, Zukiswa Wanner, and Farai Mudzingwa.
Green Shadows in the Kiya Kiya Republic, Farai Mudzingwa
Publisher: Mbonga Press
Publication Date: April 21, 2021
Genre: Novella
Language: English
Where to find it: Amazon
Farai Mudzingwa
Farai Mudzingwa’s fiction has been published by Kwani?, Writivism, Weaver Press, Enkare Review, Short Story Day Africa, and Kalahari Review. His non-fiction appears in Contemporary&, The New Humanitarian, Chimurenga Chronic, The Johannesburg Review of Books, Africa Is A Country, The Africa Report, This Is Africa, Mail & Guardian, TRT World and New Frame.
Shortlisted for the Miles Morland Foundation Writing Scholarship (2019), he is represented by Laxfield Literary Associates.
Green Shadows in the Kiya Kiya Republic
Jimalo is a young man in a dystopian and mythical post-coup Zimbabwe, with negotiable morals and simple needs. He leaves the city of Harare with his money snake to conduct urgent business with an ancient river God in Kariva. All around them, green shadows loom and threaten their mission. All the duo wants is to kiya kiya and enjoy nice things, like the winners in the Republic. To kiya kiya though, as Brother David reminds Jimalo, is to summon the consequences of encounters with ghosts, gods, girly girls and grim guardians who move in mysterious ways.
Barefoot in Germany, Tete Loeper
Publisher: Tete Loeper
Publication Date: December 8, 2020
Genre: Literary fiction
Language: English
Where to find it: Amazon
Tete Loeper
Tete Loeper is a Rwandan-German writer, actress and educational consultant.
When not writing, Loeper hosts seminars and enjoys jogging in the Black Forest where she lives.
Barefoot in Germany
Mutoni, a young girl from Rwanda, has spent all her life living under a crushing existence of poverty and social pressure.
After her mother dies, Mutoni and her sister, Tendeza, want to escape their reality, and they are willing to do anything to make it happen.
Invited to come to Germany by a former classmate to meet a potential charming prince, Mutoni can’t say no.
She dreams of romance and adventure, but life is quick to prove to her that she knew nothing about the cruel ways of the world. How will she survive in a country where she knows nobody and doesn’t speak the language?
An arranged marriage gives Mutoni the rights to live and work legally in Germany where she spends four years navigating the dynamics of being a young Black woman as well as an immigrant. The moment Mutoni understands that she has a place in the country but not in society, she will have to make a difficult decision.
The Fall of a Dynasty: Tyrants, Hustlers, and Liberators: A Bloody Struggle for Power, Joe Khamisi
Publisher: Jodey Book Publishers
Publication Date: March 6, 2021
Genre: Literary fiction
Language: English
Where to find it: Amazon, Nuria.
Joe Khamisi
Joe Khamisi is a Kenyan author splitting his time between Kenya and the United States. His main interest is in non-fiction. His first book was The Politics of Betrayal: Diary of a Kenyan Legislator, which was warmly received both in Kenya and in the Diaspora. His second book, published in 2014, is his autobiography, Dash Before Dusk: A Slave Descendant’s Journey in Freedom. On 7 April 2016, Khamisi released The Wretched Africans, a narrative on the slave trade in Eastern and Central Africa which pays tribute to the thousands of Africans who perished in the 19th century slavery.
The Fall of a Dynasty: Tyrants, Hustlers, and Liberators: A Bloody Struggle for Power
The King of the fictional kingdom of Zenga, in the continent of Buloya, has been in power for decades at the helm of a family dynasty. He rules with an iron fist. He dehumanizes his subjects and tortures and murders his opponents. He is also incorrigibly corrupt. But his days are numbered. He makes one tactical lifetime blunder, and everything falls apart. Nothing is ever the same again.
The Black Pimpernel | Nelson Mandela on the Run, Zukiswa Wanner
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Publication Date: March 6, 2021
Genre: Young Adult/Children’s
Language: English
Where to find it: Pushkin Press
Zukiswa Wanner
Zukiswa Wanner is a writer, editor, and publisher born in Zambia to a Zimbabwean mother and a South African father, raised in Zimbabwe and currently based in Kenya but who considers the whole African continent her home. Her debut novel, The Madams (2006), was shortlisted for the 2007 K.Sello Duiker Award in 2007. Her third novel Men of the South (2010) was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best Book 2011 and the Herman Charles Bosman Award.
The Black Pimpernel Nelson Mandela on the Run
In March 1961, after giving a brief speech at a conference, Nelson Mandela vanished.
For the next eighteen months he was an outlaw, living under assumed identities and in various disguises (sometimes as a chauffeur, sometimes a gardener) as the South African police and secret services, helped by MI5 and the CIA, sought him in vain. His mission? To undergo military training and set up armed resistance to apartheid.
