Tendai Huchu appreciates This September Sun

Tendai Huchu, author of the recently published novel The Hairdresser of Harare, comments on Bryony Rheam's This September Sun:

"This September Sun is really really good, the prose borders on poetic. It's a gentle yet stunningly visual story. She's a breath of fresh air. Most of our authors, myself included, are storytellers but Bryony seems to be more of a stylist, an artist.

Over the last decade, decade and a half, virtually every book that has come out of Zimbabwe, both fiction and non fiction has had some protest of 'Mugabe', 'The Mugabe Regime', 'The Zimbabwean Government', 'Zanu PF' as its core selling point. Here you have a novel that would still work even if the circumstances in the country were different. This September Sun is a powerful work and breaks new ground in our literature.

The relationship between Ellie and Gran is as fantastic a relationship as has been conjured up in any book. Rheam is a language scholar and I've read novels constructed by graduates usually of creative writing programs, which though technically excellent lack passion, experience and soul in them. This is not an accusation you can level at Rheam. There is a poetic like quality in the prose that could have only come from the heart, not from the head."