The Mad reviewed on Amazon.com in the USA

 A compelling and valuable novel about life in late 20th century Zimbabwe

Reviewed in Amazon.com the United States on April 5, 2026

'Just what goes on in Harare? Is it an aberration or is there perhaps some issue that needs to be fixed using the traditional cleansing rituals? Truly I don't know. Harare barked outside and I thought he must be through with the other dogs. Harare had no problems like us—me, Sekuru Saba and his tart, Mai Jazz, Saru and Eddie. Harare and his fellow dogs know nothing about STDs and AIDS.'

This novel was originally titled Mapenzi and published in 1999, during the second decade of Zimbabwean independence, and it was hailed as a masterpiece of Shona, a language spoken in Zimbabwe and neighboring southern African countries. Despite its acclaim, it was not translated into English until 2025, and it is the first book that has been released in the US by the University of Georgia Press as part of its African Language Literatures in Translation series, although other publishers, amaBooks and Carnelian Heart in the UK and Zimbabwe, released this book last year.

The central character in The Mad is Sekuru Hamundigone, a former teacher, who claims he was fired for not teaching from the syllabus approved by the newly appointed government, although his department states that it did so because he went mad, possibly as a result of being a soldier in the country’s war for independence from the UK. As the book begins, he is a passenger on a kombi, a van that serves as the main form of transportation for impoverished Zimbabweans, as he is headed to one of the ghettos of the capital of Harare to visit his sister, who is close to death, probably from AIDS. During the long van ride Hamumdigone talks nonstop to his annoyed fellow passengers about his troubles, and throughout the book he is an anti-hero who occasionally invokes sympathy from his family, and the reader.

The other characters in the book are related to each other in some fashion, although it took some work and a set of personally written notes to determine who was who, a task which was ultimately worth it. Seemingly everyone is engaged in a day-to-day struggle to both get by and to achieve some degree of fulfillment, mainly by drink, drugs, promiscuous sex, or watching football matches with friends. Nearly everyone is out to get money, typically by conning strangers or, in the case of young women, including university students, lovers, as the girls not infrequently prostitute themselves in order to buy clothes or jewelry or get their hair done in modern styles, while hoping to marry someone who will provide them with a better and more stable life.

Violence is another common theme in the book, most often by men who at times brutally assault their wives or lovers, and occasionally are attacked just as badly in return.

HIV/AIDS is a constant fear, although it isn’t necessarily the largest one, given the daily struggles to survive and find satisfaction. The dog ironically but suitably named Harare is perhaps the most sympathetic figure in the book, as he seeks enough food to eat while avoiding abuse from the woman who shelters him but not frequently beats him for trying to take her food.

As life becomes more difficult, the residents of this ghetto, and presumably others in similar neighborhoods in and outside of the capital, also become “mad” in the manner of Hamundigone, who makes an apt claim towards the conclusion of the novel: "You say I am mad but I say it is you who are mad. Which of us is really mad?"

The Mad is a valuable and compelling exploration of life in Zimbabwe in the 1990s, which is filled with deeply flawed people who induced both sympathy and a First World sense of disapproval in this reader. It is a valuable and necessary addition to the limited number of books by African authors that have yet to be translated into English, and I look forward to reading more of the books in this series from the University of Georgia Press.

Darryl R Morris