Tendai Huchu at the European Conference on African Studies

Tendai Huchu will be reading from his book, The Maestro, The Magistrate and The Mathematician, at the 8th European Conference on African Studies on Thursday 13 June at 1.00pm. The University of Edinburgh’s Centre of African Studies is hosting Europe’s international and largest conference with an African focus from June 11-14. It takes place in the University's central campus and is organised on behalf of the Research Network of African Studies Centres in Europe AEGIS.

The conference brings together 1,500 leading researchers, policymakers, and leaders from across the world. There is a complementary series of artistic and cultural events, as well as various networking and capacity building events, including some particularly aimed at the next generation of African researchers. 

In The Maestro, The Magistrate and The Mathematician, three very different men struggle with thoughts of belonging, loss, identity and love as they attempt to find a place for themselves in Britain. The Magistrate tries to create new memories and roots, fusing a wandering exploration of Edinburgh with music. The Maestro, a depressed, quixotic character, sinks out of the real world into the fantastic world of literature. The Mathematician, full of youth, follows a carefree, hedonistic lifestyle, until their three universes collide. In this carefully crafted, multi- layered novel, Tendai Huchu, with his inimitable humour, reveals much about the Zimbabwe story as he draws the reader deep into the lives of the three main characters.

Born and raised in Zimbabwe, Huchu presently resides in Edinburgh. In the words of the literary scholar F. Fiona Moolla, Huchu may well be the writer who, through his immigrant Zimbabwean characters in The Maestro, The Magistrate and The Mathematician (2014), has written the city of Edinburgh into the twenty-first century global novel, doing for Edinburgh what Charles Dickens did for London, and James Joyce did for Dublin.

The Maestro, The Magistrate and The Mathematician is published in Zimbabwe by amaBooks, by Parthian Books in the UK, by Ohio University Press in North America, by Kachifo in West Africa and is available elsewhere through the African Books Collective.