Interview with the University of Georgia Press's editors of African Language Literatures in Translation

Reproduced from https://hopscotchtranslation.com/2026/03/22/allt-interview/

North American Cover

Zimbabwe/UK cover

Erik Beranek in conversation with Alexander Fyfe and Nate Holly

'We see the translation as a creative practice, in the same way that the original is. We want the translators to do their thing. And for that to be something that readers will engage with too.'

Earlier this month, Hopscotch editor Erik Beranek sat down with two of the editors of the University of Georgia Press’ new African Language Literatures in Translation series to discuss the origins and goals of the series and the importance of translating literature from African languages. The series’ first publication—Ignatius T. Mabasa’s Mapenzi, translated into English as The Mad by J. Tsitsi Mutiti—published in North America on April 1, 2026. 

Erik Beranek: Thank you both again for joining me to discuss the University of Georgia Press’s new African Language Literatures in Translation series. I think the series will be really interesting to many of our readers. And it is especially exciting for me, since I also work at a university press. I’m always interested to learn more about what other university presses are doing with translation and how it fits into their publishing.

But for starters, would you tell us a little bit about the origins of the series. How did the idea initially come about? Where did it originate? And what does it take to get a series like this started?

Alexander Fyfe: Sure. I think in some ways it’s a fairly mundane beginning. I was at an event where the director of UGA Press, Lisa Bayer, was tabling for the press, and we got chatting about the possibility of a series publishing translations of African literary works, a prospect about which Lisa was very enthusiastic.  After that, I was put in touch with Nate as a potential series editor. I already knew Chris, so I approached him about being a co-editor. And from there, we went through the long process of putting together a series proposal, and putting that through peer review—which I think probably took a little over a year, if I’m remembering correctly—and then getting together the advisory board, which also took some time.

And from there, getting the first few titles into the production pipeline. Which really brings us to where we are now, with the first one coming out very soon, in the next few weeks.

Erik Beranek: Yeah, The Mad is coming out very soon, on April 1st. Oh, look at that! [Nate holds up an advance copy of The Mad.]

So, yeah, I guess the origins of projects like this are often somewhat mundane, as you say. I find it interesting, probably just because I straddle these two worlds of translation and university press publishing, but maybe for readers who aren’t aware of how series like this are structured and run—would one of you want to speak to that and say a bit about the different roles involved? Alex, you’ve already mentioned an advisory board. And you and Chris are the series editors, while, Nate, you are the acquisitions editor for the series (among other things) at University of Georgia Press. Would one of you mind speaking to how all the work gets organized and distributed in running a series like this?

Nate Holly: I imagine Alex and I will have different answers, or slightly different overlapping answers. I don’t want to bore people with peer review stuff, but part of what separates university press publishing from, you know, a press like Two Lines or other presses that publish a lot of translations is peer review. And, as Alex mentioned, we also peer reviewed the series proposal. I looked at the first draft of the proposal in December of 2021, and the series was under contract in January of 2023, so… I mean, that’s not bad. But peer review was a challenge, especially at the start, and I can tell you a story about the peer review of this translation [The Mad] a bit later if you want.

But Alex mentioned that we have five translations under contract at this point. We didn’t want to announce it until we had a number of projects in the pipeline. And so, the first few years of this has been Alex and Chris pounding the pavement and reviewing submissions. We have a form that interested translators can fill out, and that’s how almost all of these, if not all of them, have come to us—the translator proposes them.

And then once Chris and Alex get that form—and it took us a couple of tries to get that form right, I think—they share it with me, and I—you know, I’m the bass player in the band, I keep things moving from here. Alex and Chris get involved at a couple of different points after that. They’re involved when the translation comes in. We all read the translation and we have it reviewed by an outside reader, and then we all communicate with the translator to get the translation in order.

And the series advisory board, each series has one, and they do different things on different series. This one… well, Alex and Chris would be better positioned to say why they assembled the group that they did. But I think part of it is just that Africa is a big continent with a lot of languages, and we wanted to have that coverage for resources to figure out who would be best to read a particular translation, who would be best to read a Swahili translation or a translation from another language. Even Chris and Alex might not have all that expertise, right? But they have the network that does. So that’s part of what we see the series advisory board doing, and they’ll also occasionally review a translation themselves. Anyway, that’s the quick and dirty version.

Alexander Fyfe: The advisory board members also help connect us to translators and to other potential texts that are out there to be translated. And also, potentially, to co-publishing agreements with publishers on the African continent. Several of the people with whom we work on the board either have their own presses or have been integral to getting previous translations published.

Those networks have been really valuable, particularly if the long-term goal with the series is to create a sustainable environment for the translation of African language texts that doesn’t just rely on them being published in the United States. We want there to be a kind of feedback loop to the continent. And we want this to ultimately be a collaborative endeavor between translators, literary practitioners, publishers, and writers. And so, the board is really key for that, and we plan to expand the board in the future as the direction of the series develops.

Erik Beranek: Yes, I definitely want to ask you to say more in a minute about your ambitions to create a sort of feedback loop, as you put it, because that’s really exciting to hear. It’s so important, and I think a lot of publishers who are working in global publishing are trying to figure out the best ways to do something like this, so I’m really intrigued to hear your plans there.

Before we get to that specifically, would you mind saying a bit about the general goals and the scope of the series? I know some of this is already up on the series website, but just for the sake of our readers—I know you already have certain books under contract, and I’m sure you have your sights on some others. Are there particular regions, countries, languages that you’re finding are coming up more often than others right off the bat? Are you finding yourselves needing to put in extra work to diversify the set of languages that you’re encountering and being pitched? And is that an explicit goal right now, or maybe something you expect to emerge as an explicit goal as you get farther along?

Alexander Fyfe: Yeah, sure. I think this is quite an exciting moment for the translation of African writing. There are more and more translations being published by a wider variety of presses. See, for instance, David DeGusta and Mesfin Felleke Yirgu’s translation of Baalu Girma’s Amharic novel, Oromay (Soho Press) and Jay Boss Rubin’s recent translation of Euphrase Kezilahabi’s Swahili novel, Rosa Mistika (Yale University Press). And several series being launched by other university presses that focus on translations from Africa in one way or another [see the list of resources below]. But we felt from the beginning that it was really important to have a series that focused on translations into English of texts originally written in African languages. And that’s obviously a category that means different things to different people, but we mean particularly languages from Africa that don’t already have a lot of venues for translation. There are already routes to translation for texts written in French, for instance. We decided we wanted to try and at least create one place where African language texts could be published in translation.

So, we get a lot of submissions related to Swahili writing, which has been really exciting, and we have three texts forthcoming that are translations from Swahili. There’s a lot of really exciting, innovative fiction in Swahili, a lot of it with a speculative angle. Which is also very confluent with where the current field of African literary studies is and will likely generate a solid audience. But we want to represent as many languages as possible. And so, partly with the help of the advisory board, partly through people that Chris and I meet at conferences, or things we see online, we try to seek out and encourage translators to submit their proposals to us. But really, we’re really open to anything. We want the direction of the series to be determined by the people who become involved with it.

Erik Beranek: Great. And so, French, as you say, and obviously English, but probably also Portuguese and maybe Arabic—these more globally represented languages, and often if not always colonial languages, will not be the focus. It’s going to be the indigenous African languages that have much less exposure and have a harder time finding translators and publishers globally.

Alexander Fyfe: Yeah, and that’s obviously challenging, because there needs to be more of everything, right? There are great Francophone texts that, unfortunately, are not always getting translated. But, in terms of the series having an identity, and also focusing on one area that we really think we could add to, this made the most sense.

Erik Beranek: I love that you mentioned the translators being, so far, the primary vehicles by which projects are getting to you. I had a note to ask about this, basically in exactly those same terms. Having done a few translations myself, I find it interesting that it’s not talked about more often, how one part of the work of being a translator is almost like that of an acquisitions editor at a press. When developing and pitching a project, you’re thinking about comp titles, you’re thinking about who the readers will be and what the market for the book will be, and you’re thinking about what presses would be best to get the work to the right audience—so, you’re thinking about the project in terms that are really similar to what an acquisitions editor at a press is thinking about. Anyway, the idea of translators as a sort of scout for these projects is, I think, really interesting and something that people don’t talk about too often.

You’ve touched a bit on linguistic diversity, and clearly there are going to be certain languages that come up more often than others, and you can find ways to push to help increase the inclusion of others. Are there other types of diversity that you are pushing for with the series? For instance, is gender diversity—among the translators, among the authors—something that has come up in discussions, so far? I’m not so familiar with the various literary scenes in Africa, so to speak, so I guess just out of curiosity, are there other ways that you are thinking about the distribution of authors and translators, are there other issues of identity and diversity that have come up for the series?

Alexander Fyfe: It’s something we’ve discussed extensively, and I think the first couple of years really have been about just getting some great work out there, which we can hopefully then use to attract more people. To get more people to come and work with the series. And as we get on more people’s radars, through the work itself and through opportunities like this interview, we’ll hopefully be inundated with more and more translations, and that will let us begin to take more of those factors into account.

Thinking about the spread of where our translators, where our writers come from, and the different kinds of experiences that they have, and that they bring to their work, I think that will be more and more important as we continue building this archive.

The other kind of diversity that we try to think about is the literary forms that the series publishes. And that’s sort of tricky, because we made a decision early on to focus primarily on narrative works. Partly in order not to compete with other series, but also to focus on texts that we think are likely to be assigned in college classrooms, and likely to generate enough interest to keep the series viable. And narrative has a great deal of diversity within it. So, we don’t want to become only a venue for speculative fiction, for instance, or the realist novel, or any other narrative mode. And so, that is something that we’ve tried to take into account as we’ve said yes or no to projects that have been pitched to us.

Erik Beranek: Yeah, trying not to have all of the books fall into one single form, one type of work, but to diversify that from the beginning.

Alexander Fyfe: Absolutely. And sometimes we’ll be offered what sounds like a really fascinating novel, but it might fall a little close to one or two things that we’re already doing. And we want to reflect the variegated nature of the literary field as much as we can.

Erik Beranek: A couple of questions about the translators. Do you find that the translators, so far, are predominantly coming from the regions and languages that are being translated? Are a lot of them working and translating in Africa, or has it been predominantly translators from the U.S. or from English-language countries? And is there a desire to be working primarily with translators working in Africa? Again, at this point, I’m sure the main goal is to get the projects going, first and foremost, but will that be a consideration eventually?

Alexander Fyfe: For the projects we’ve seen so far and for the initial books that we’re publishing, yes, we have mostly seen interest from translators based in the U.S. We’re… I mean, I should sort of back up and say, the journey through which these things sometimes get to us can be a little convoluted, and so we may initially start talking to somebody about one project and then they’ll put us onto a different one. You know, the story of how we got to The Mad is actually quite a long one, which initially began with us speaking to a different translator from Zimbabwe about something else, and then it emerged that there was this other project happening that was already tied to another press, which had the rights for a different territory.

But yes, certainly, moving forward and working with the advisory board, we do want to work with translators in the African continent. And that shouldn’t necessarily mean translators from a particular place translating writing from a particular place. We’re very interested in the kinds of transnational connections, within the African continent and beyond, that translation can facilitate and create. So, the answer is yes.

Erik Beranek: I’m also interested to hear about some of the aims and standards that are going into how you think about evaluating the translations themselves—obviously with the help of the advisory board and peer reviewers and everyone else. In translation theory, there’s long been the distinction between domesticating and foreignizing translations. There are those translations, probably the majority of them, that aim to take a work of literature from another place, another language, another way of thinking, and to bring it into a new language and a new context in a way that is familiar and, maybe, more easily digestible for readers of that language—maybe aiming for familiar standards of literary merit, for instance.

On the other hand, there are people who argue that a translation should, at least in certain cases, really lean into the fact that the language of the translated text is truly foreign, and that its foreignness should come across even in the translated, English-language version of the work. I don’t know if there’s a neat answer to this, but is that something that has come up in discussions around the series in general or certain translations more specifically? The series seems like an interesting venue for this. Translations from French can obviously also do this, but when you’re talking about languages that get significantly less representation globally, the foreignness of a foreignizing translation could be significantly more.

Alexander Fyfe: Nate, do you want to speak to the question of evaluating the translations, since you’ve been really involved in that?

Nate Holly: So, from a philosophical perspective, I’m not a translator, I’m an editor. So, I defer to Alex, Chris, and the translator. I don’t know if this was the plan initially, but it’s become what we do on all these books: we have each translator write a translator’s note that explains the choices they made on this specific question. But also, in one book, They Are Us, a whole section was moved, because it didn’t make sense where it was, and that gets explained. And in one I was looking at today, Swallowers of Bones is the translated title, there’s a lot of poetry in there, and some of the poetry was left out, because the translator couldn’t find a way to translate it and keep the narrative flow and make it make sense. You know what I mean? There are always those challenges that we ask translators to speak to, because that’s part of this too. And when these books hopefully end up in classrooms, that’s a discussion that we envision people having, about what the translation does, and why it does it.

As I alluded to before with The Mad, the translation of The Mad underwent traditional peer review. It went out to two readers, who reviewed the translation. One of the unique things about this one is that Mabasa, the author, was directly involved with the translation. So, it was an authorized translation. But one of the peer reviewers didn’t know that and criticized some of the choices that the translator made but that Mabasa also made and authorized. And, of course, there’s no way the reviewer could have known that (and they also made some suggestions that the translator did make), but we were able to use that internally to make this what we at UGA Press call a “mandated series,” where there’s still outside review, but it’s not the sort of outside review that our faculty editorial board has to approve. A translation like this isn’t scholarship, or it’s not the same kind of scholarship. Translation of fiction is an art. An art that we still have reviewed. But incorporating the suggestions from those reviews is up to the translator and editors in a way that it might not be for traditional scholarship. In most cases so far, those outside reviews have really shaped the “translator’s note” that accompanies each of the published books. So, what we do now is Alex, Chris, and I come up with one outside reader, who is either a writer themselves, or they speak and read both the original language in question and English, and we send them the translation, we send them a PDF of the original, and ask them to review it using specific questions that we want them to answer. And it’s not just to clear hurdles but to make the best translation possible, and make sure the translator has considered these things, and maybe they want to polish some stuff, or revisit, or make sure they address something in their translator’s note. So, just because it’s not formally peer-reviewed doesn’t mean it doesn’t have the usual university press outside reader review. And that’s especially necessary for these sorts of translations. We do other translations at University of Georgia Press, translations of scholarship, and that’s a different process. But this is translated fiction, and that’s a different animal, I think.

Alexander Fyfe: We see the translation as a creative practice, in the same way that the original is. We want the translators to do their thing. And for that to be something that readers will engage with too. That’s why the translator’s note is important, because with that, even someone who doesn’t know the original language can get a sense of the choices that have been made and what might be at stake in them. And that will let them undertake an informed reading of the translation. We put the translators’ names on the covers, and we want their take on the text, and the linguistic choices that they’ve made, to be part of the conversation about these works.

Erik Beranek: That’s fantastic. That was another question I was going to ask, about translators’ prefaces. It seems so important, I would argue it seems so important with basically any text, but, you know, with a language that has less of a history of being translated and thought through into English-language texts, it seems even more important to familiarize readers with some of the challenges that come up during the process. That’s why at Hopscotch, one of our favorite categories of texts that we publish are the unpublished translator’s notes—giving translators the opportunity to write about their work and the difficult and exciting decisions they’ve made, when they weren’t given the space to do so in the published book. So that’s music to my ears—and great also, obviously, that you put the translators’ names on the covers! The translation community thanks you for these great decisions.

I would love to hear more about the plans you have for, as you put it before, creating a sort of feedback effect, and about how you hope that having these translations come out in English here will be able to turn into a positive effect back in the literary communities and the literary markets in Africa. It’s a really important question and great that you’re asking it from the beginning. In The Language of Languages, the book by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, he makes a distinction between enabling and disabling translations when thinking about translating work and thought from marginalized languages into dominant, colonial languages like English or French. A disabling translation might be when a writer or thinker from a marginalized language chooses to translate him or herself into a dominant language. Because doing so might create much greater exposure for that person’s thought, and they might be a great spokesperson for their language and home and history, but in translating themselves into the dominant language, they deprive the marginalized language of an opportunity to grow and live and expand. That aspect was particularly important to Ngũgĩ’s own work. But a translation can also be disabling when it treats the dominant English-language market as the most or only important one, and is just expanding what is on offer for us, getting “world literature” into our market for our pleasure and for our profit. And, of course, on an individual level, an author stands to benefit from being translated into a dominant language, and that can give them the opportunity to be a good spokesperson, but there’s also the question of using a translation into a dominant language to facilitate new connections for the marginalized languages and to create new opportunities of those languages to live and grow. Ngũgĩ mentions using existing English translations of Western classics to translate them into Gĩkũyũ, or using English to enable a conversation between Korean and Gĩkũyũ.

Anyway, I was thinking about that when planning for this discussion, so it was great to hear, right away, before I even got to ask the question, that you’re already thinking of the series in terms of enabling translations, if not in exactly those terms, and that you’re thinking about how these translations might facilitate connections between different languages on the African continent. Would you say a bit more about how you’re thinking about this feedback effect, as you called it, whether more philosophically, so to speak, or just in terms of some concrete plans you have for the series and what you’re hoping to achieve?

Alexander Fyfe: Thanks. That is something we take very seriously, and it is an issue we will be revisiting as we move into the next phase of the series. I think one of the things that I wasn’t necessarily prepared for when we began this was how different each project would be. Every single one involves a different configuration of a translator (or sometimes more than one translator), somebody who holds the rights, maybe an original language edition that was published some time ago, and sometimes another press that’s already involved and wants to publish it in a particular territory. And so, I think it’s in our careful involvement in those processes, without ever wanting to push anybody out, that these things come to the fore. So, we’ve worked… and Nate will have more to say on the nature of our collaborations here, but we’ve worked with amaBooks, which is based in Wales and Zimbabwe. That was on The Mad. And with Mkuki na Nyota, the famous Swahili-language publisher based in Tanzania. And so, it is about listening to who is involved with the text and, as far as possible, pursuing collaborations to make sure that either the translation we’re producing is widely available to as many people as possible, or that we’re also facilitating the creation of other editions. And I think one of the exciting things about The Mad is that there are now two editions of this translation, with different paratexts, circulating in the world. Which I think is relatively unusual, at least recently, for an African language text. And so, embracing the plurality of different editions, and making sure that, as far as possible, our involvement means that Africa-based presses can also be involved in the publication is really important.

Erik Beranek: In addition to the English language versions that you’ll be publishing and trying to get those available globally to the greatest extent possible, are the originals—I mean, I’m sure this is going to be case-by-case too—but are the original language editions available in print, typically? And is there any way in which you’re hoping to, if not now,  maybe eventually, try to facilitate the greater availability, maybe over here, or globally more generally, of those texts?

I suppose I’m asking just because of how constantly shocked and dismayed I am by how difficult it is for me to even get a book that was published abroad in a big international literary market, and in a dominant, well-represented language like French or Spanish. It’s hard to get even those. I recently tried to buy a book that was published in France within the past five years, and I was being asked to pay $70 for shipping. And the fact that that’s still the case with the international shipping of books, even between Europe and North America, where there’s such constant shipping and commerce, it’s going to be even harder when you’re thinking about South America or Africa. So, from that perspective, I’m wondering if that, if making African-language original texts available more widely is something that’s on your radar, or even something that’s been talked about or possible?

Alexander Fyfe: That is something we thought about and take very seriously. We don’t pursue translations that aren’t already published in the original language. Sometimes someone will approach us and say, I’ve written this novel in this language, and I want to get it translated and published. But we do not want to create a situation where texts written in African languages are only circulating in English. That said, some of the originals of older works that we’ve translated may not currently be in print. And I hope that as we continue, we can begin to facilitate opportunities for those texts also to circulate in their originals, or at the very least to support that. It will be interesting to see if the interest that’s generated by the translations maybe does encourage the original text to be reprinted or republished. That’s something we’ll be keeping an eye on and adapting our practices accordingly.

Erik Beranek: Nate, I’d like to come back to the university press-specific questions for a second. I’m interested in your thoughts on the place of university presses in publishing literature. As you’ve already alluded to, it falls outside, a little bit outside of the standard operating procedures of a university press, and yet I feel like more and more university presses are turning towards literature in one way or another. Peer review is one thing that sets university presses apart, as you’ve said, but also being mission-driven publishers, right? I’d be interested to hear how, for you, or from the discussions you had leading up to this series for University of Georgia Press, how publishing literature and especially literature in translation fits into your mission.

Nate Holly: Yeah, so, as you might imagine, I have a number of thoughts about this sort of thing. But I think being a mission-driven press—and our mission, by its very nature, is pretty wide-ranging—is about… well, being the University of Georgia Press, it’s about publishing the stories of the people of Georgia and the South, right? But it’s also about partnering with our university community. Partnering with our global research university community, including people like Alex, to do things like this. Things that often are not possible at non-mission-driven presses. There’s a reason why this series didn’t exist until 2020-whatever, right? Well, there are many reasons, but, you know, one of them is that the big trade houses aren’t going to do this, because they’re not going to sell 30,000 copies of The Mad. We know that, we don’t sell 30,000 copies of very much, and that’s okay. That’s more than okay, that’s part of our mission, too. Maybe not specifically University of Georgia Press’s mission, but part of University Press missions more generally, and my mission, is that because we are not driven by profit—which is not to say we don’t need to make a profit, but, you know, it’s not the number one factor—we can do these sorts of things that are important for reasons beyond… capitalism. And that’s the case, whether it’s translation or somebody’s memoir or a creative nonfiction project that maybe twenty years ago would have been firmly on one of the Big Five’s mid-lists, and now they’re not even looking at them because they don’t have enough TikTok followers, or whatever. So, it’s an opportunity for us.

The challenge, especially with this series, is that translations are not cheap. In any way. We have to acquire the rights, which cost money, and cost future money if royalties are part of it. Especially if we’re acquiring the rights from a publishing house. We also want to be fair to the African publishing houses. We don’t just want to take from them, right? I think we’ve only had one case where we negotiated the rights with an author retaining the rights, and that ended up not working out for a bunch of reasons. So, the rights cost money, then paying the translator. Their names are on the cover, but they need more than just a name on the cover. And so we have to be creative. In our case, or in the case of African Language Literatures in Translation, that means making royalties a part of it. That way, translators make more money the more books get sold. So, they’re incentivized to continue to be involved after the book is published.

But also, like any other nonprofit, the way this works, and this is another way we’re able to leverage our mission, is that these books are all supported by donors. People are donating money to the press explicitly for African Language Literatures in Translation. So, I mean, that’s just part of the reality, and part of how we can play with our fine margins enough to publish this [holding up The Mad] and make it available to the English-reading public. And because we’re a university press, we have distributors on every continent, including Africa. Our preference would be for an African publisher, to work with them to get the rights so that they can distribute the book within their networks that we don’t know as well. But they’re going to have to be published first, in most cases, for them to see that as even an option. And I don’t know how that happens without being at a mission-driven press, whether that’s a university press or another sort of independent press.

Erik Beranek: I think it’s really important to talk about the challenges publishers face and about the literary market in general when talking about literary translation. And yeah, the consolidation around the Big Five has created a lot of challenges, for sure. But it’s great to see initiatives like this filling important gaps in the profit-driven model. I mean, there are a ton of really wonderful, wide-ranging, small independent presses out there doing incredible work. I think independent publishing in the United States right now is just a beautiful thing, despite how embattled those presses are. And it’s wonderful to also see more university presses joining into that. Because you’re absolutely right that without indie presses and university presses and other mission-driven, nonprofit publishers, this literature doesn’t get published.

Well, before we sign off, is there anything I missed, anything I didn’t ask about that you’d like to cover? Nate, did you get to tell the story you wanted to tell about The Mad?

Nate Holly: Yeah, it was a little frustrating, but we ended up being able to use the peer review of The Mad to tweak the peer review process a bit and make it more effective for fiction translations. All the sort of stuff that Alex and Chris don’t need to worry about, but that I get paid to worry about. So, yeah, that ended up being good in the end, but it was supremely frustrating. Like, what are we supposed to do with this? And then the other thing, too, is especially with two… at least two of the projects under contract, the authors are dead… they’re not around anymore, right? So, they’re not able to do what Mabasa did with The Mad and quote-unquote authorize the translation. So, what do we do in those cases? You know what I mean? But that’s not particular to this series. That’s the nature of translation.

Erik Beranek: Well, The Mad looks beautiful, and it’s so exciting that it’s coming out in just a matter of days. So, congratulations to you all! I can’t wait to see where the series goes.

One last question before we sign off. Would you mind giving our readers some resources to start exploring and thinking about African literature in the contemporary moment? Maybe some books or articles that have influenced your work? Or links to some of the partners you’ve mentioned here, or to other presses or organizations working in this space? I already mentioned Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s The Language of Languages, published a couple of years ago by Seagull, and I’ll also take the opportunity to shout out Souleymane Bachir Diagne’s From Language to Language, published in English translation this past fall by Other Press. But please feel free to add to the list, books or otherwise—I’m sure our readers would find it really useful.

Alexander Fyfe:

A list of 14 African books published in English translation in 2024:

https://brittlepaper.com/2024/12/14-translated-african-books-that-deserve-all-the-flowers-in-2024/

Wendy Laura Belcher’s list of books published in English-language translations from African languages:

https://wendybelcher.com/african-literature/translated-african-language-novels/

Ruth Bush’s Translation Imperatives: African Literature and the Labour of Translators

Nate Holly:

Here are a few of the African Publishers we’ve worked with so far:

Mkuki Na Nyota: https://mkukinanyota.com/

Jonathan Ball Publishers: https://www.nb.co.za/af/humanrousseau

East African Educational Publishers: http://www.eastafricanpublishers.com/

amaBooks: https://amabooksbyo.blogspot.com/

And here are a couple of examples of other recent UGA Press translations:

Teresa Benguela and Felipa Crioula Were Pregnant: Motherhood and Slavery in Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro by Lorena Féres da Silva Telles (tr. Anthony Doyle)

Feline Cultures: Cats Create Their History by Éric Baratay (tr. Drew S. Burk)

Other university press series related to the translation of African literature:

Global Black Writers in Translation (University of Vanderbilt Press)

The African Poetry Book Series (University of Nebraska Press)

Modern African Writing (Ohio University Press)

CARAF Books (University of Virginia Press)

Alexander Fyfe is an assistant professor of Comparative Literature and African Studies at the University of Georgia. His work focuses on the relations between politics and literary form in modern African literatures, and his book, Writing the Noncolonial Self: Modern African Literatures and the Politics of Subjectivity, is forthcoming with the University of Virginia Press in 2026. He co-edits the African Language Literatures in Translation series for University of Georgia Press with Christopher Ouma.

Nathaniel Holly is editor-in-chief of University of Georgia Press, where he acquires books in history, food studies, sport studies, Appalachian studies, and more. He received his PhD from William & Mary, having written a dissertation on the urban lives of Cherokees in early America. His favorite translation is Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (tr. Olena Bormashenko).

Originally published on Hopscotch Translation

Tuesday, March 24, 2026

Outside of North America, The Mad is copublished by amaBooks Publishers and Carnelian Heart Publishing

The North American edition of The Mad has arrived

 

'Time. Let us learn to give time a chance. What is the hurry after all? What is it you are rushing for? A grasshopper in a man's palm does not even know the size of a man.'

Copies of the University of Georgia Press edition of The Mad have been delivered to amaBooks.

Congratulations to author Ignatius T. Mabasa and translator J. Tsitsi Mutiti.

In North America, copies are available through https://www.ugapress.org/9780820376936/the-mad/

The United Kingdom version is available through https://carnelianheartpublishing.co.uk/product/the-mad/ or https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mad-Ignatius-T-Mabasa-ebook/dp/B0FRJKZJQY/

In Zimbabwe, contact Book Fantastics (263 7792 10403)

J. Tsitsi Mutiti about the translation of Mapenzi to The Mad

 J. Tsitsi Mutiti's speech at the Harare launch of Ignatius Mabasa's The Mad

My sincere thanks to all who are gathered here to help us celebrate the completion and publishing of this English translation of Mapenzi to The Mad. I very much appreciate it.

I will begin by answering a question that I’ve been asked many times: why translation and why Mapenzi? The simple answer is that I fell in love with Hamundigone’s personality described by Memory Chirere as uncensored and sometimes utterly warm and likeable. I loved Bunny’s and Magi’s introspection. I loved all the characters because they are so relatable. These are not people to be pitied but strong people living their lives the best they can. They are people making the most of whatever resources are available to them to live their lives. 

The second reason is that I wanted to improve my halting Shona literacy. I could read Shona but not comfortably because I only had a few years of formal Shona education. What better way to improve on my Shona language than reading books in Shona? When I finished reading Mapenzi for the first time it stayed in my head. I think we need a word for books that stay with you for a long time. The way we have the word earworm in reference to songs that, when you hear them, continue playing in your head. While this book earworm was playing in my head I started wondering how Hamundigone would sound in English. Or Mai Jazz - how would her degree in popotology sound in English? 

Years ago, while at the University of Zimbabwe, I met Nhamo Mhiripiri and he introduced me to Russian literature. I became an enthusiastic fan of Gogol, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Tolstoy and others. Every week would find me haunting the library in search of my next Russian novel. At some point Nhamo and I had a conversation about the beauty of translation and how all these great books would have remained inaccessible to most of the world if they had remained in Russian. I asked, why our great novels, like Mungoshi’s Kunyarara Hakuzi Kutaura, haven’t been translated into English and he responded 'You could translate your favourite books'. I laughed and forgot about it because I thought he was teasing me – but here we are. The seed planted so long ago germinated when I started asking myself whether I could really do it? Could I really translate a book in Shona into English and produce something reasonably resembling the original?  And just like that I decided to try it. This translation basically started life as a private exercise aimed at improving my Shona and to see if I could do it – and here we are; so many years later the exercise has borne fruit.

What a journey it was! It has been a learning experience all the way. The very first paragraph in the first line “ndinoparadza zvisina mutsindo sehwai”, which I translated as “I am a lethal and silent destroyer, like a ram”. When I first read hwai I was thinking of sheep. The word sheep is not normally associated with anything menacing. I had a conversation with my colleagues who set me right by explaining how dangerous the male of the species could be. Hence the choice of ram in the translation.

The other thing I learned is how much we take our mother language for granted. Its words are so deeply imbedded in our minds that we usually don’t really think about the concepts these words represent. When translating this analysis becomes necessary so that a fitting word or phrase can be found. Sometimes this is a simple process, other times it’s a wrestling match.

Language is a patchwork made with words, culture and other beliefs peculiar to the speakers of language. Patchwork was my grandmother’s favourite pastime. She was one of those people who could never be idle, and patchwork was what she did when there was no work for her to do. She was able to do so much patchwork because my mother’s side hustle of sewing and selling clothes produced a lot of fabric scraps for Gogo’s work. It was my job to sort through the scraps left over from sewing and pack all the suitable pieces into “Box raGogo”. Gogo made her patchwork into pillows, quilts and sometimes tote-bags for us her grandchildren. Sometimes one of her grandchildren would say I want a quilt just like the one you made for Mukoma Hope. She tried but it was not always possible to replicate Mukoma Hope’s quilt because the contents of Box raGogo depended on what my mother was sewing at the time. I would dig into Box raGogo under her instructions looking for the bits she wanted. Sometimes we’d find fabrics in the right colours but with wrong textures. Or the right fabric but the wrong colours. Ultimately the second quilt would be its own thing but with a greater or lesser resemblance to Mukoma Hope’s quilt depending on the time that had passed.

In some ways translation is very much like Gogo trying to use scraps from box B to replicate a quilt made with scraps from box A. Take a simple concept like walking. Box A will have words like famba, fora, kanyaira, pesvaira, bhidhaira, dhanaira, digaira, chakwaira. Maybe even pesu-pesu or tutya-tutya.  Box B will have walk, march, stroll, tread, waddle, toddle, prance, sashay, power walk and so on. Sometimes the correspondence is immediately obvious but other times the choice from Box B takes a bit of thought and improvising. Sometimes Box B might not have a corresponding word at all and one has to make do with a phrase or even a sentence. Take the word Munhu. That’s simple enough to translate into English. But what of chimunhu? Or Zimunhu? Or a concept like ngozi that is intrinsic to Shona beliefs. Would karma be good enough to convey the idea? Avenging spirit? Or does it need a paragraph to convey the full meaning of what ngozi is? 

This means that the final product bears some resemblance to the original (hopefully a lot) but is in a way its own thing. Ultimately translation is an approximation and, as a translator, one has to accept that some things will be lost in translation: nuances, some emotional content, cultural aspects. The idea is to minimise these losses as much as possible. And also to avoid new things creeping into the story because of cultural differences or differences in beliefs and values between the original audience the book was written for and the target audience of the translation.

Dealing with cultural differences between original audience and target audience

Language and culture are so closely intertwined that any work in a particular language is also a reflection of that culture.  A culture likely to be foreign to the targeted reader. This presents a problem of how to handle these cultural differences. I think writers of sci-fi and fantasy who create worlds that have their peculiar cultures and rules also experience the same problems of how to convey these worlds to their readers in a way that the readers will understand. Writers like Frank Herbert in his Dune series or Isaac Asimov in his Foundation series do this by using quotations from various documents and commentaries said to exist in those worlds. The quotations bring the reader to the author by explaining and educating the reader about the world they enter when they read these books. Likewise the translators can do a similar thing through footnotes and glossaries. Other authors like Anne Leckie in her Ancillary Series and Ursula Le Guin in her EarthSea series simply get on with their story assuming the reader will be able to infer what kind of world it is and how things work in that world from the story. There is little detouring to explain the culture and values of these worlds. This is similar to how translators can bring the author to the reader in the same way. This second approach puts greater emphasis on entertaining the reader, while the first approach looks to educate the reader. The Mad underwent a transition from the first approach to the second approach at the suggestion of the editors. I think they made a good call. As I say this has been a learning experience for me. My original purpose in doing this translation for myself was superseded by a new purpose to translate for an actual audience. 

Finally our cultures determine our values and this is an area where a translator has to make decisions about whether to take the values of the target audience into consideration. I did not do this but translated everything as is because sexist attitudes, homophobia and violence are intrinsic to who we are. Happily, the editors remembered to put a disclaimer at the beginning of the book concerning these issues.

 I’d like to thank Ignatius Mabasa for trusting me with the work of translating his creation and I hope I have not mutilated it too badly. I would like to thank Jane Morris and Samantha Vhazure for the superb work they did in polishing my rough work. And thanks to amaBooks and Carnelian Heart Publishing for believing in this translation enough to publish it.

The Mad, by Ignatius T. Mabasa, reviewed by M.A. Orthofer in The Complete Review

Reproduced from https://www.complete-review.com/reviews/zimbabwe/mabasait.htm#ours 

The complete review's Review:

       The Mad features a number of variously related figures, its chapters shifting in perspective from one to the next, various voices coming to the fore, whether in the first person or in action and dialogue in the chapters presented in the third person. 
       A central figure is the teacher Sekuru Hamundigone -- or rather former teacher, as he's recently been fired --, and much of the early part of the novel has him traveling from rural Bindura to the capital, Harare, soliloquizing -- or ranting -- to the others in the kombi they are travelling in. He claims: "I'm a genius but they call me mad". Given his behavior -- and babbling --, it's easy to see why he might be considered mad: as someone notes: "Ah, can anyone understand Sekuru Hamundigone ? He himself is sick. I can't follow his conversation". 
       Hamundigone is a familiar kind of figure, a war veteran traumatized by what he has experienced in his long-troubled country -- and also the 'wise fool'-type, who recognizes how wrong much has gone in the country since, someone who recognizes that: "The madmen are those who see madness in others when they cannot see their own".
       He laments:

I have been through much and much has been through me. Zimbabwe has mauled me so that even today the wounds remain unhealed and septic like the scars that I brought back from Mozambique after the war. Zimbabwe has scooped out my spirit, the same way you do when digging a grave. It has left a gaping hole that can't be closed. I have seeen so much in life for which I have no words to explain.

       His references show he is an educated teacher, up on both contemporary local writing as well as his Shakespeare -- complaining, for example, in the kombi:

I can't read my Mungoshi since there are no lights in this minibus. So what do I do ? You guys are blessed, you don't see bloody daggers before your eyes, you have no problems that steal your sleep and you can easily drift off even during travel on a bumpy road.

       He laments about those in power:

We know those who are mad. It is those who claim to have fought in the war of liberation when they did not. They are mad those leaders who claim they saw too much bloodshed during the war of liberation and want to offer libations of more blood. [...] The madmen tear up children's clothes to make their suits. They have cataracts in their eyes, not natural ones but cataracts that cause them to see mirages and fail to fix problems.

       We eventually also learn the reason that Hamundigone was fired -- not because of any perceived madness, but rather because he: "was straying from the accepted path", as he: "was no longer teaching the kids the authorized syllabus". He takes pride in having: "taught my kids to get to the root of ideas, the root of creativity", having taught them critical thinking -- but that was no longer acceptable in the system. 
       Interestingly, Hamundigone is flawed -- and failed in his role as a teacher -- in another way, as he had also at one point knocked up Magi, one of his daughter Cleodia's classmates, when he was her teacher. Magi had the child, and the matter was apparently discreetly covered up (with a private pay-off); it's not why he was fired. (Unsurprisingly, Cleodia, who now works in a bank in Harare, and Hamundigone are estranged.) Magi is now a student at the University of Zimbabwe (while her mother takes care of the toddler) -- though with much of her focus on trying to find a man who can support her (with Magi defending her choices by noting: "I just did what every other girl here at college is doing"). 
       Others figuring -- and coming to voice -- in the novel include Hamundigone's sisters, Charity and the widowed Maud, and Maud's young son, Reuben, and her lover, Bunny, who is, in turn, Magi's brother. The fear of HIV and AIDS is, understandably, widespread -- though the most detailed description of an STD (a character whose: "penis was covered with pimples and sores") is of a different sort (but comes about in a particularly shocking way). Money is always an issue (though, while inflation was already very high in the time the novel is set in, the economy had not yet succumbed to the devastating hyperinflation that came in the 2000s). Characters deal with rape, and several die. 
       The Zimbabwe here never recovered from the long fight for independence and the involvement of the conflict in Mozambique; as Magi puts it

      The war never ended. It morphed into other types and we are right now dodging bullets being fired by poverty and corruption.

       Among the minor characters is a dog, left for Mai Jazz to take care of "by her white employer when her employer fled the country and returned home to Britain". The dog, named Salisbury, is much-loved by Mai Jazz's employers, and they even go so far as to pre-pay for two years' worth of the fine pet food he is used to eating at the local pet store. Mai Jazz cashes that account in soon enough ("saying the dog had been run over by a bus"), and re-names the dog 'Harare'; for quite a while: "he refused to eat sadza and refused to answer to the name Harare" -- but, eventually, the dog gets the picture:

Salisbury realized that life had changed and began eating dusty sadza and feeding from bins. He became the Harare we now know. He had arrived in Zimbabwe. 

       An appropriate little allegory, in a city and a country that was, in many ways, going to the dogs .....
       And this city of Harare itself also figures prominently -- and as, for example, Bunny notes: "Harare is brutal" (while Magi comes to find: "It is like this with most people in Harare; they are like phantoms"). 
       There is some verse in the novel as well -- Bunny, for example, turning to it as he reflects on life and finding, among other things, that:

Life is a weeded plot
Where weeds sprout again tomorrow
And the day after
Until life is no more
All you have harvested being only questions.

       The Mad is a slice of such life, offering scenes from the lives of a rich cast of characters, but without easy or definitive resolutions to most of their situations (except, of course, those that don't survive ...). The madness of the place and times does not find a cure.
       Often -- and often for understandable reasons -- the characters bewail what happens to them, in language and outbursts that can verge on the histrionic, such as Magi explaining that: "I am emotionally roasting like a pig on a spit". Yes, quite a bit here drips with excess -- so also Hamundigone's behavior and outbursts under the cover of 'madness' (though as one of his sisters notes: "One good thing about him is that his madness is only verbal") -- but the characters are pushed to extremes by their, and the nation's, circumstances, as well as those they look to rely on, including the women looking for a man they can rely on (who pretty much all prove to be unreliable, and worse) or when Heaven is asked to take care of young boy Reuben for a few days .....
       Translator J.Tsitsi Mutiti discusses some of the translation issues and approaches she took in rendering the Shona into English in an introductory Note, and while aspects of the novel can be difficult for the foreign reader to follow, that is not primarily due to the language and references, which seem to be conveyed well. 
       In Bunny's description of Hamundigone, Mabasa surely is also suggesting that the story can only be told in this not-straightforward way, polyphonic and variously shifting in ways that can, yes, be confusing while getting to the (often ugly) roots of the matter:

It's hard for me to say whether he is mad because some of the things he says are true and significant, but the way he talks is confusing, so it is hard to say he is sane.

       Indeed, one surely might expect a novel titled The Mad to be more than a little mad as well -- and it is (with a madness that extends to another of the word's meanings, as there is much justified anger on display here, too). As Bunny prefaces his remarks about Hamundigone, however: "I now accept him just as he is" -- as the reader should this novel.

- M.A.Orthofer, 10 March 2026

Zimbabwean writer Philani Nyoni, writes an interesting and candid review of Ignatius Mabasa's book 'The Mad' with its colourful insights of Harare, Africa and... sanity.

The Mad reviewed by Philani Nyoni in teambooktu.com

https://teambooktu.com/harare-is-a-garishly-painted-whore-a-review-of-ignatius-mabasas-the-mad?

TITLE: The Mad

PUBLISHED BY: amaBooks Publishers & Carnelian Heart Publishing

ISBN: 978-1-914287-96-1

PAGES: 235

AUTHOR: Ignatius Mabasa, Translated by J. Tsitsi Mutiti

I received a copy of Ignatius Mabasa’s The Mad with the anticipation of a bottle green fly washing its hands over a pile of human shit. I like shit, good shit, Ignatius usually writes good shit and I hoped this one, J. Tsitsi Mutiti’s translation of his iconic debut, Mapenzi, would fall into that category.

Soon after getting into the text I had the feeling I should read the original book in chiShona. I suppose I wanted to see how far from the original text The Mad  had strayed. I was bothered by the translation of “Shirikadzi inochema-chema” into “The widow sobs” (36).  It felt inadequate, and so I got the original version, in chiShona, and began to read them side by side. I quickly abandoned the comparison, satisfied that language carries a whole world on its shoulders: cosmology, symbols, blood memory and all that juicy stuff. I have, for a while, been speaking to Mabasa about translation, have followed Ngugi’s spectre to Limuru and stood in the Polytechnic raised where his theatre was razed, and one thing I know for certain, is that translation is more an act of rewriting. A simple phrase like “he felt as if a heavy person was sitting on him” when read in chiShona has supernatural connotations which the English does not convey, unless one chooses to over-explain. In the same vein, there are instances where the Shona idiom shines through translation, and the translator’s care is evident when she prefaces with phrases like “the ancients knew about life when they stated…” (51). I abandoned my duel-wielding style and decided to read The Mad for what it is, not the book I had formed up in my head.

In this translation, Mabasa’s timelessness shines through. What seemed to concern the writer in the year 2000 is still contemporary; in the eyes of his characters I saw a Harare that hadn’t changed much in twenty years. Over the course of my reading, I pondered one question: WHAT IS MADNESS? According to Einstein, it is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results.

“I am not mad, but I know those who are mad” (183). We are offered many definitions of madness throughout the book, blessed with various samples and each invites one to ponder deeply. Sometimes madness is pathological, at times behavioural. It is institutional as well, it is all around us. Stylistically, it is not deployed as a tool with scat and jazzy rhythm like Brian Chikwava’s Seventh Street Alchemy, but appearances can be deceiving. Perhaps the style represents some semblance of sanity, a world that looks ordered and stable, but beneath the surface, fire burns and cauldron bubbles.

The text is acutely aware of its timelessness. On page 15 the narrator laments not being able to read his Mungoshi in an unlit minibus, on page 19 we are offered an insight into the persona’s inner turmoil when he says, “Now I appreciate Dambudzo Marechera’s sufferings as he carried around his idiosyncratic ideas, with those who didn’t think the same way as him calling him insane”. Again, the reader asks, WHAT IS MADNESS? It is interesting to ponder that line in connection with one on page 15, “No, don’t think that I am mad. When I am out of my mind I will let you know.” Or another on the following page: “Where can you find the strength to argue with someone and convince them that you aren’t crazy? It is not possible. That only makes them think your madness has stepped up a notch”.

In these passages, the author not only nods at Marechera and Mungoshi, like books that have literary characters are wont to do, there is hint of legacy and continuation, which justifies the existence of this publication as though answering the question of what has changed from the Harare Marechera sketched in Mindblast, or the place Mungoshi’s Lucifer Mandengu described as a failure’s junk heap in Waiting for the Rain.

Marechera, Mungoshi and Stanley Nyafukudza are often described in Zimbabwean literature as the Unbelievers who were disillusioned early with the liberation struggle. In Mabasa’s offering, the liberation war is a major part of the plot, and this time we see the fortunes of those who faced the bullets turned upside down, mostly through the plight of Hamundigone. “I am no longer a comrade, every other lizard is now calling itself a comrade” (36). The population is vastly disillusioned with the war, those ‘born free’ profess that, “…this war you always talk about has nothing to do with us. I don’t even know what Smith, whom you fought, looks like, so don’t keep irritating us. Were you forced to go to war?” (111). Meanwhile, some are claiming to have fought in the war and it seems to be a currency of power (183).

It is still an Animal Farm, as per a subtle nod to Orwell that references the new elite as not made in the image of God but with hooves to tread on the masses (18). The country seems to have gone to the dogs; and that is why “my brother is a real dog, like Harare” (85), an image that’s a bit on the (wet?) nose, since we have an actual dog named Harare featuring in the novel. Nutters are not welcome near Parliament, “even though the place itself is riddled with lunatics” (23). Although, I dare say, across the world, very few houses of Parliament aren’t nuthouses. Sewage flows in the streets (71), “Harare is worthless. Like bubblegum that has lost its flavour and just wastes your energy in chewing.” (38). Harare is brutal (57). Harare is a witch (35). Harare is a garishly painted whore… Harare is shameless do you know – and heartless. It is immoral like a plate that you dish out on even though it has not been washed… Harare! I fear Harare! (40). The Zimbabwe portrayed here, “has scooped out my spirit, the same way you do when digging a grave” (15). And whose fault is it? “…it’s those who have so pissed on you that even a war slogan has become nauseating” (13).

The pages are heavy with the smell of decay. Not just the piss and sewage drowning out the streets that even the blind know by smell when they have reached, but everyday life itself is in decay, “the life of youths in Harare is much like the heavily polluted Mukuvisi River” (56).  In Harare, “…the truth is that we all prostitute ourselves” (64). Although the characters are well sketched and feshed out, we see people alienated from themselves, transformed by poverty into caricatures in this Harare. They begin “to act like Americans who have no time for others” (25) and even walk headlong into destructive ways through alcohol and substance abuse, after all, “what way is not death?” (219) “Totems and clan names in Harare are the car you drive, the chequebook and MasterCard you carry, the suits you wear and the cellphone you have” (46). 

Humour carries this text a long way, reminiscent of Marechera’s House of Hunger where the horror of the details is saved by the quality of writing. The situations may be tragic but you have to laugh. It is not a damp and morose story of trial and flowing shit, that river of shit has many nuggets in it, sometimes the simple advice, like, “Bunny, do you know that if you steal you’ll be arrested? So let some things alone, like a sister’s breast” (194), because, “you may admire your sister’s breast, but no matter how arousing it may be, there’s not a thing that you as a brother can do about it” (44).

I hate that this book comes at a time when we have become obsessed with African positivity and enjoy labelling critical writers like NoViolet Bulawayo sellouts, a time when we seem to have forgotten that literature is a mirror, and breaking it doesn’t improve your veneer. I think such criticisms do not consider who we are writing for. For me, as it is with Stephen King, “writing is necessary for my sanity. As a writer, I can externalize my fears and insecurities… I’m able to ‘write myself sane'”.

It is still a good story, and for those who have seen sewage flow in the streets who have run out of candles during power cuts, or seen people lose their sanity and still go to work, with nobody stopping them even though they are crazy (34), it stands relevant today as it did back then. If only African writers could choose to write something more positive; right? Well, “…’if only’ is a madman’s philosophy” (55).

Philani Amadeus Nyoni

Philani Amadéus Nyoni is a Zimbabwean writer and actor.  His writings have been published on several platforms and media worldwide. This is his review of Ignatius Mabasa's latest work, 'The Mad'.

Book Review: The Mad by Ignatius T. Mabasa - Translated by J. Tsitsi Mutiti

The Mad reviewed by Tafadzwa Madzika in Greedy South (https://www.greedysouth.co.zw/2026/01/book-review-mad-by-ignatius-t-mabasa.html)

In Zimbabwean society, and to a broader extent Southern African society, there are larger than life characters who are regulars at the local shopping centre, who have their sanity constantly in question. They always have alcohol on hand and offer up monologues and rants against the "authorities" without any motivation. The lack of care by social services or the absence of them as a whole, makes them easy to feel sympathetic for, while their characters are often abrasive and easy to hate. 

This is Hamundigone, a war veteran and teacher at the centre of Ignatius Mabasa's The Mad, a 25 year old novel originally published in Shona as Mapenzi but recently translated Into English by J. Tsitsi Mutiti. In monologues that showcase keen insight and channel allegory, Hamundigone paints late 90s Zimbabwe in vibrant brushstrokes, while making us question his mental well being. Within the first few chapters it's clear that The Mad is a presentation of Mapenzi with nothing lost in translation.

"When you find yourself being asked when you will return, don’t think it is a sign of popularity. Sometimes people look forward to their freedom in your absence. So, now that I am going, don’t bother to ask me any questions because I have no answers for you. Just know that I will be back." - extract from The Mad

From Hamundigone's introduction there is a dive into characters just as vibrant as him, if not in personality then in the complexity of their lives. The Mad spins a web that touches on themes of culture, identity, homophobia, gender based violence, the liberation struggle, substance abuse and the AIDS pandemic. It is gripping yet laced with humour even in the most heartbreaking of moments. 

Through the lives of several individuals we travel through love, heartbreak, hope, while living in a repressed society. The fortunes of the country are expressed through a dog that changes names from Salisbury to Harare, and somehow strikes up a friendship with Hamundigone. The argument of cultural erosion vs needed adaptation is regularly put forward, along with a display of government inadequacies.

A novel 25+ years old yet still effervescent in its social commentary and satire. The stigma and fear mongering that gripped society in the 90s as depicted by The Mad, is almost exact mirror what happened during the world's most recent pandemic. A fact that shows us how well Mabasa captures Zimbabwean culture and the well entrenched underlying beliefs that guide Zimbabweans. 

The novel showcases both the brilliance of Ignatius Mabasa as a writer and J. Tsitsi Mutiti as a translator. A must read novel in every context.

Title: The Mad
Authors: Ignatius T. Mabasa
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Carnelian Heart Publishing & amaBooks Publishers

The Mad is available across all major book selling platforms and locally in Zimbabwe from Book Fantastics.

The Mad chosen as one of the '100 Notable African Books of 2025'

 

Brittle Paper have included Ignatius Mabasa's The Mad in its list of 100 Notable African Books of 2025

(https://brittlepaper.com/100-notable-african-books-of-2025/), saying 'Originally published in Shona as Mapenzi, this milestone of Zimbabwean literature finally receives a fearless English translation.' The translation, by J. Tsitsi Mutiti, follows the original novel in being recognised - Mapenzi was featured in the Times Literary Supplement as 'one of the most significant novels to have come out of Africa.'

Brittle Paper is an online literary magazine for readers of African Literature. They are Africa’s premier online literary brand inspiring readers to explore and celebrate African literary experience in all its diversity.

The Mad is co-published in Zimbabwe and the United Kingdom by amaBooks Publishers and Carnelian Heart Publishing. The University of Georgia Press are to be publish the novel in North America in April 2026.

North America Cover

UK/Zimbabwe Cover