Novel
Harvest of Thorns
Shimmer Chinodya · 1989
Synopsis
At independence, Benjamin Tichafa comes home to his mother and his young brother with a young wife. The novel then goes back in time: Benjamin's childhood in the Rhodesia of the sixties, in a strict Christian family whose father is a deacon, his attraction to black nationalism, his loneliness at boarding school, then his departure for Mozambique, where he joins the liberation fighters and discovers war.
Context
The novel appeared in 1989 in Harare with Baobab Books, then in 1991 with Heinemann. It shows the struggle for independence less through battles than through the daily life of the camps, the power struggles among fighters and the place of desire, and critics read it both as a coming-of-age story and as an account of the war. Weaver Press reissued it in 2020. The novel has not been translated into French.
Who it is for
To live from the inside the struggle against the Rhodesian regime, through a young guerrilla and a torn family.
Prizes and reception
Commonwealth Writers' Prize for the Africa region in 1990; Hugh Lewin praises its blend of a private and a public reality.