Reader Comments about This September Sun

‘This is a wonderful book. I really would love to meet Bryony. Her book is poetry. I read it on the plane, underground trains, buses. I finished it today on the bus when I was coming from Birmingham to Coventry and I said to myself, here is another Doris Lessing.’  Albert Nyathi

 

‘I grew up in Bulawayo at the same time as Ellie, but experienced the 1980s in a different way – from a black person’s point of view – but, while the book is fiction, the Zimbabwe described is not.’ Noma Gwere

 

‘It’s so beautifully written and I think Bryony grew up in Zimbabwe around the same time as me so there are so many little things she mentions that capture that era so perfectly. I couldn’t put it down and relished every single page.’ Monireh Jassat

 

‘The book brought back a lot of memories for me growing up in Bulawayo! No self-respecting Bulawayan should go through life without having read This September Sun!’ Veena Bhana

This September Sun and other books now available in South Africa and the UK

This September Sun, Dancing with Life: Tales from the Township, Long Time Coming: Short Writings from Zimbabwe and other 'amaBooks titles are now available in several bookshops in South Africa, including Clarke's Books in Long Street, Cape Town, Adams Campus Bookshop in Durban and Xarra Books in Jeppe Street, Newtown, Johannesburg. 

This September Sun will also be available soon in the United Kingdom through Books of Zimbabwe (www.booksofzimbabwe.com). Other 'amaBooks titles are available outside of Zimbabwe through the African Books Collective (www.africanbookscollective.com).

This September Sun review in Warwick Review

A review of Bryony Rheam's novel This September Sun, written by Dr James Graham of Middlesex University, is scheduled to appear in this month's The Warwick Review, alongside reviews of other Zimbabwe books, including, hopefully, other titles from 'amaBooks.

The Warwick Review is part of the Writing Programme organised by the English Department at Warwick Unversity. James Graham is the author of Land and Nationalism in Fictions from Southern Africa, in which he investigates the relation between land and nationalism in South African and Zimbabwean fiction from the 1960s to the present.

The Zimbabwe Independent congratulates Bulawayo writers

The Zimbabwe Independent congratulates three Bulawayo-based writers who have published their first books in a special supplement on 18 December. The writers, Bryony Rheam, Christopher Mlalazi and Raisedon Baya, are all graduates of the British Council Crossing Borders Creative Writing Project and have all been published by 'amaBooks.

The three first books featured are Bryony's This September Sun (published by 'amaBooks), Chris' Dancing with Life: Tales from the Township (published by 'amaBooks) and Raisedon's Tomorrow's People (published by Homegrown Arts).

Petina Gappah wins Guardian First Book Prize

'amaBooks congratulate Petina Gappah, who has just won the Guardian First Book Prize for her 'humane and disarmingly funny' An Elegy for Easterly.

As well as taking home the auspicious literary title, Petina has been presented with a GBP 10,000 cheque and an advertising deal for her book in both the Guardian and the Observer newspapers in the UK.

Chair of the judges and literary editor for the newspaper group, Claire Armistead, said: 'Petina Gappah's humane and disarmingly funny mosaic of life in Zimbabwe is undoubtedly one of the very best.'

The Raconteur Review of Long Time Coming: Short Writings from Bulawayo now on-line

Tom Cheesman's review of Long Time Coming: Short Writings from Zimbabwe, edited a little from that published on this blog in September, has been published in The Raconteur magazine in the United Kingdom. The original review can be found online at: http://amabooksbyo.blogspot.com/2009/09/long-time-coming-review-from-raconteur.html