Launch Invite for This September Sun

A night to write home about

amaBooks and Alliance Francaise de Bulawayo invite you to

a Book Launch and a Dinner with Poetry

THURSDAY 19th NOVEMBER

5.30pm Launch of the novel This September Sun, by Bryony Rheam
Guest Speaker: Owen Sheers
Free Admission, All Welcome

followed by, for those who wish, at 7.00pm, Dinner with Poetry
With readings by Owen Sheers from Wales and John Eppel from Zimbabwe

A table d’hôte menu will be available, with choices of starter, main course and dessert.

Please book early for the dinner as numbers are limited, telephone Bulawayo Club reservations on (09) 64868. Payment for dinner to be made directly to the Club at the dinner.

This September Sun This September Sun, the first novel by Bulawayo writer Bryony Rheam, is a chronicle of the lives of two women, the romantic Evelyn and her granddaughter Ellie, from the time Evelyn arrives in the country at the end of the Second World War to the present day.

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.

The book has been described as ‘a wonderful first novel’ (Caroline Gilfillan), ‘a beautifully executed story’ (Christopher Mlalazi) and an ‘absorbing debut novel’ (John Eppel).

Bryony Rheam was born in Kadoma in 1974 and lived in Bulawayo from the age of eight until she left school. She studied in the United Kingdom and then taught in Singapore before returning to teach in Zimbabwe in 2001. Bryony has had short stories published in several anthologies and she won the Intwasa Arts Festival koBulawayo Short Story Competition in 2006.

Owen Sheers is a poet, author, playwright, actor and BBC TV presenter from Wales. Owen is best known in Zimbabwe for the semi-fictionalised account of the life of his great-great uncle, Arthur Shearly Cripps, maverick missionary to Southern Rhodesia,The Dust Diaries. He is also a renowned award-winning poet, and his first novel Resistance has been translated into ten languages. Recently, he was the presenter of the BBC series A Poet’s Guide to Britain.

John Eppel is Bulawayo’s best known writer and poet, with four collections of poetry, six novels and two collections of short stories and poems to his name. John was awarded the Ingrid Jonker Prize for his poetry collection Spoils of War and the M-Net Prize for his novel D G G Berry’s The Great North Road.