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

Ignatius T. Mabasa's The Mad reviewed by Pat Brickhill in the Zimbabwe Review

Getting through the 1990s

The 90s were a vibrant time of political and economic shifts. The 25-year-old State of Emergency was lifted and the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) was implemented. A new generation of young Zimbabweans had initiated radical ferment, students at the University of Zimbabwe “dared to dream of a freer world” and post independent writers emerged onto the literary scene. Among them was a young man named Ignatius T. Mabasa, who would write Mapenzi, a novel written in his mother tongue chiShona, which used the state of madness to ponder and reflect on the state of Zimbabwe. Mapenzi was published by College Press, Zimbabwe in 1999.

The Mad, which was launched in Harare at the National Gallery in October 2025, is an English translation of Mapenzi. It has been described as a novel that uses reality, poverty, irony, humour and ridicule to paint a poignant picture of the struggles of Zimbabweans in the 1990s. The protagonist and central character is a war vet named Hamundigone. I found it fascinating that his Chimurenga name Hamundigone can itself be translated to characterise the protagonist as one who cannot be subdued or conquered; he can be described as a notorious character – someone who wins against overwhelming circumstances usually caused by the community around him.

Fired

The story opens with Hamundigone having been fired from his role as a teacher because of his actions. He is accused of being unstable, or being mad (The fact that he impregnated a schoolgirl does not appear to have been a factor in his dismissal). Hamundigone is travelling to Harare in a kombi. He speaks, sometimes to his fellow travellers, and sometimes he just speaks and the reader discovers more not only about him but also about the world around him.

“As you see me, 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 I brought back from Mozambique after the war. 

Zimbabwe has scooped out my spirit, the same way you do as when digging a grave.”

Using madness

People who are deemed to be ‘mad’ are unwanted travelling companions. I commend Ignatius Mabasa in his use of madness to transcend the self-censorship of many early post-independence writers. He presents us with a strong and often intimidating character who has no filter in what he says and whose utterings have the ability to generate empathy, exasperation and dislike from the reader in equal measure. At the same time we see him as a vulnerable human being reduced to eating from a rubbish bin.

Other characters like Magi, Bunny, Maud, VC, Mai Jazz and Kundai are first introduced then woven into the story. We discover titbits of information about their lives. We read about the struggles of financially unsupported university students and the lengths to which they go to survive. The connections wax and wane as the story moves forward and the reader discovers they are linked in a variety of ways that continue to evolve.  

Humour is included in the bleakness as we meet Salisbury, a white-owned dog who is left to Mai Jazz after his owners have fled the newly independent country. 

Learning to survive

Mai Jazz becomes the political commissar in a ZANU(PF) Women’s League Branch and when the city is renamed Harare, Salisbury the dog becomes Harare as well. His life changes dramatically but he soon learns he must survive or die and starts to eat sadza and to find food where he can.

While the writing has been accused by some as being fragmented and confusing at times I did not find it so. I immersed myself completely in The Mad. And as I read I remembered the crazy 1990s. At times the memory was painful: the beginnings and subsequent devastation of AIDS were so frightening. Rumours about the ‘short illness’ spread through Harare, and death became more and more familiar. Zimbabweans had to learn to hustle. The Mad is the terrifyingly familiar past of those who lived, and continue to live in Zimbabwe. 

'Sanity is a very strange commodity'

Critic Kizito Muchemwa once said: “Sanity is a very strange commodity in the fictional world created by the new generation of storytellers.” Mabasa uses Hamundigone’s madness to allow him to ‘fearlessly blame the government’ and to speak openly and honestly about ‘the mental and physical anguish experienced by Zimbabweans in the 1990s, where the impact of the beginnings of the economic decline affected everyone. My son Liam, who was a pupil at Blakiston Primary School in Harare, told me that he and fellow students used to scratch out certain letters on their Eversharp pens so that the pens read ‘ESAP’. It is a sobering experience to look back on those times. 

The Mad reminded me that even in the most difficult of times people are resiliently trying to live their best lives. One of the many strengths of this novel is that, through this story, I feel that I have ‘time travelled’ back to those times. 

Captivated

I was fascinated to read that the original novel Mapenzi had been translated twice – once by author Tendai Huchu and now by Joyce Tsitsi Mutiti. I believe she succeeded in her task “to ferry the spirit of the book”. As a non-Shona speaker I am unable to comment much on aspects of translation except to note that it was Mutiti’s translation that ‘spoke to Mabasa’s heart’, as the author has stated in an interview. 

As I finished reading The Mad I was so captivated by the book that I immediately sent a message to publisher Jane Morris to let her know that I found it to be an incredible read. I believe it to be a book that should be widely read – and I would recommend it thoroughly. My only regret is that I am unlikely to ever be able to read the original Mapenzi. 

The Mad is co-published in the United Kingdom and in Zimbabwe by amaBooks Publishers and Carnelian Heart Publishing. 

It is available in Zimbabwe through Book Fantastics (@bookfantastics), and in the United Kingdom through Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/Mad-Ignatius-T-Mabasa/dp/1914287967) or through Carnelian Heart Publishing (https://carnelianheartpublishing.co.uk/product/the-mad/)

John Eppel at the Bulawayo Book Club

John Eppel will be at the Bulawayo Book Club on 29 November to discuss his novel Hatchings.

It is New Year in Bulawayo, and anybody who is anybody is out celebrating.

Based on Alexander Pope's dictum that 'those who are ashamed of nothing else are so of being ridiculous', Hatchings sets out to ridicule people of all races who abuse power - behind the pulpit, the podium, and the paint brush.

The novel, whose central metaphor is baby-dumping, is set on New Year's Eve for good reason: it's the time when powermongers are at their most self-indulgent, most exposed. It is precisely the time when we see how much alike they are. In Hatchings, this similarity between the left and the right, between church and state, between black and white - so obsessed with their own moral worthiness, so quick to inflict their sanctimony on us all - is demonstrated by the fact that they all, quite literally, dance to the same tune.

'Beneath the scurrility, this is a profoundly romantic novel, it tells of a touching love story between a young white couple who are saved from the prevailing Philistinism and corruption by two things - a love of English literature and a love of the Matopos.'

Terence Ranger in The Zimbabwean Review

'The book is about exploitation, meanness; and it's about loveliness'

Southern African Review of Books

amaBooks are fortunate to have published two novels, Hatchings and the translation into English of Ignatius Mabasa's Mapenzi as The Mad, that were chosen in the Times Literary Supplement as two of 'the most significant novels to have come out of Africa.