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/)

The Journal of the Britain Zimbabwe Society review of 'Whatever Happened to Rick Astley?'

 Reproduced from the Zimbabwe Review, The Journal of the Britain Zimbabwe Society, Issue 23/3 September 2023. ISSN 1362-3168

Review

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO RICK ASTLEY?

Pat Brickhill reviews a collection of short stories by Bryony Rheam

Bryony Rheam’s latest book is a collection of short stories, each one is linked in some way to Zimbabwe.

Most are set in various suburbs of Bulawayo, where Bryony lives with her family. A handful are set in the UK, and The Piano Tuner, a touching story of prejudice and compassion, is set in Zambia.The subject of each story varies from potholes, to disappearing electricity, to the physical and human neglect of Zimbabwe, but each describes a different facet of loss. 

'The beauty of the ordinary'

I would agree with fellow Zimbabwean writer Siphiwe Ndlovu, who writes on the back cover that Bryony portrays loss 'of identity, memory, country or a loved one' and 'capture(s) the beauty of the ordinary'. 

The writer has a talent for vividly painting with words the world she is writing about. We are drawn into a realm of reflection that arises with the passage of time as we grow older: reliving childhood, or the excitement of joining the world of adults, combined with the loneliness that can come with old age. 

These themes are developed in The Queue and These I have Loved, while the consequences of bad life choices are explored in Dignum et Justum est. 

Bonding

Bryony Rheam has a wonderful talent for bonding the reader with the story, tackling emotions that are familiar, looking at belonging, the loss of country, of husband, or merely the passage of time. Each story left me with a strong sense of the character struggling against the vagaries of life and perhaps attempting to reach a point of resolution or even redemption. 

Castles in the Air was a beautiful descriptive story blending the compassion of motherhood with the magic of childhood, as the mother distracts from a power cut by taking her daughter on a late afternoon walk, enthusiastically joining in her child’s imaginary games. My least favourite story was The Colonel Comes By, which describes the stark, desperate struggle of a single mother, as the ending left this reader rather confused. 

The Big Trip, The Young Ones and Last Drink at the Bar explore the familiar divide that opens with choices, or the lack of them, by those who leave their country and those who remain – as each attempts to justify or acknowledge where they live. Moving On is a touching story of coming to terms with the hidden trauma of loss that surfaces when memory and reality merge. 

Bryony gives a glimpse of her skill at humour with Christmas. The Fountain of Lethe uncovers a memory from childhood perhaps best left buried.

Finally, the title story is a wonderful wistful reflection of a mother inspired by remembering a song from her youth in Whatever Happened to Rick Astley?. 

I found this anthology both touching and entertaining. To some these stories will provoke nostalgia, for many people have endured the trauma of leaving the country of their birth – often leaving loved ones behind. Some tales will leave the reader with a familiar longing and feeling of sadness but every narrative is bursting with warmth and empathy. This anthology provides a poignant glimpse into the lives of strangers who are nevertheless familiar, to all who are fortunate enough to be able read it.

I thoroughly recommend it. 

 Whatever Happened to Rick Astley? by Bryony Rheam

Published by amaBooks, Zimbabwe/ Parthian Books, UK

ISBN 9781779310958/ 9781914595141

224 pages, 2023

Pat Brickhill is a freelance writer and BZS secretary.

Whatever Happened to Rick Astley? is available in the UK through Parthian and all good bookshops and online outlets, in North America through the African Books Collective, and in Zimbabwe through the Orange Elephant in Bulawayo and Bindu Books in Harare.

Britain Zimbabwe Society Review of All Come to Dust

 Reproduced from www.britainzimbabwe.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/BZS-Review_Dec21.pdf

British Zimbabwe Society Review: Issue 21/4 December 2021

Pat Brickhill on a Bulawayo-based detective story 

All Come to Dust, by Bryony Rheam 

Bryony Rheam has written a ground-breaking book – a captivating detective story set entirely in present-day Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Rheam explores a different writing style from her debut novel, This September Sun, and presents the reader with a story that is more than the traditional detective genre (and which perhaps embraces several genres). The novel opens as we meet Chief Inspector Edmund Dube shortly after a murder has been committed in the leafy inner suburbs of Bulawayo. Marcia Pullman, a wealthy but unpopular socialite, has been discovered dead in her bedroom. Dube, who is an apparently high-ranking policeman, is in on the case (despite a lack of co-operation from his colleagues) . Reminiscent of Agatha Christie All Come to Dust is reminiscent of Agatha Christie’s work, as Bryony Rheam leaves tantalising clues and red herrings, leading the reader down several cul-de-sacs. The initial pace of the novel was slow but I enjoyed the book more as the pace increased. Chief Inspector Dube meets Craig Martin on the day of the murder and commandeers his battered Renault to reach the scene of the crime. Martin is destined to play a central, sometimes comical role. The eccentric Edmund Dube appears even more of an enigma than Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot. At times it was difficult to fully accept his role as the protagonist and, in spite of the difficulties he grappled with as a child and now as an adult, I struggled to feel compassion or much fondness for him. On the other hand, the oddball Craig Martin is far more developed as a character. He almost demands our attention as we find out about his struggles with life. Flashbacks reveal both men’s childhood experiences: Edmund Dube has grown up straddling two cultures, and feels unaccepted by both the black and white communities, while Craig Martin has survived an unhappy and sometimes tragic childhood.  

I applaud the author’s decision to weave social commentary through her story. She refers to the realities, inequalities and prejudices familiar to anyone who grew up in Rhodesia and after 1980 Zimbabwe when, among other changes, facilities previously reserved for whites were opened to all races. Bryony Rheam shares her knowledge of the majestic Bulawayo landscape with striking portrayal of the everyday life and struggles that have affected so many Zimbabweans, especially in the last 20 years. She handles her subject sensitively, though strongly enough to make the reader aware that all was not well in society when Edmund Dube was a boy. This state of affairs affected not only his immediate family (his father goes to join the struggle and his mother has to support him by working a domestic worker in town) but also the country as a whole. Edmund, fairly unusually, is taken into the home and under the wing of a Scottish couple, the MacDougals, who employ his mother. They appear to do all they can to provide opportunities which, otherwise, he might not have had. Archibald MacDougal is also a policeman, a Detective Inspector, and this seems to provide the inspiration for Edmund’s later career choice. Another legacy of the MacDougals is Edmund’s unusual passion for fictional and television British detectives. 

Very cleverly, the reader is left guessing, almost to the end of the book, as to the reason for the crime or identity of the murderer. Edmund Dube – like Poirot – gathers the potential murderers together and questions each in turn to identify the real culprit. Bryony Rheam’s story telling is gripping, very clever, sometimes sad, often amusing, but very occasionally I felt was not totally credible. I found the closing pages of the book as she tied up all the loose ends a little too neatly and the convenient connections slightly unconvincing – perhaps because she presented us with rather too many potential murderers and a victim without a single redeeming quality. While this may not be have been completely my cup of tea, I congratulate Bryony Rheam on her achievement and I am sure we have not seen the last of this Zimbabwean writer. I think fans of the traditional detective story will enjoy this book. 

Book reaffirms Zim's poetry status

Textures, poems by John Eppel and Togara Muzanenhamo, reviewed in the Daily News, October 18, 2015

Textures, published by Bulawayo-based amaBooks, is an innovative new poetry collection from two intriguing Zimbabwean poets: John Eppel and Togara Muzanenhamo.  

   Both poets are gurus of the technical form, formal master craftsmen of the art of poetry, here displaying a familiar selection from the different types of poem: sonnets, sestinas, dizains, villanelles, etc. often only vaguely remembered from high school study of poetry and removed from the more familiar free form. This reviewer is a novice poetry reviewer, a reader of poetry rather than a poet, so this appraisal will focus more on content than form.

   While other countries express fears that poetry is dying, Zimbabwe, by contrast, has been described as ‘a country of poets’. Many forms of poetry exist alongside one another from the traditional to the performing to the activist poet. In Textures amaBooks has brought together two wordsmiths who decorate a literary landscape of personal love and longing, though this can by no means be described as a love anthology.

   Each poet speaks in his own distinctive voice: John Eppel’s first poem is the nostalgic ‘Suburban Night in August’, which begins ‘The distant all-night drums, a dripping tap…’ and ends expectedly with that pain of love lost so painfully shared ‘……unclasp your hair, give it a tousle, set it free, smiling at him the way you smiled at me.’

   Togara Muzanenhamo dramatically introduces himself with the shocking ‘Gondershe’ ‘Having never fired a gun before, he held the rifle as though the weapon were a dying child about to say something only they could share...’ ending with the revelation of the 12 year old soldier cradling his gun and awaiting a certain death.

   While Eppel can, at first reading, seem light hearted, less serious, he can also stun his reader as he does with the simple brilliance of ‘Only Jacarandas’.  His beautiful sequence ‘The Hillside Dams’ walks us into his head and heart as he reveals his innermost thoughts description intertwined with emotion.

   Eppel’s love of the Matopos, the birds, the plants are only a part of the everyday existence that he uses to paint the landscape of his own experience for the reader. His ‘Four Villanelles’ brings with it a rawness of the pain of his own experience of longing and loss. Sometimes regretful and jaded, other times light hearted and droll, Eppel provides us with a rollercoaster of emotions familiar to us all. He speaks with the sad voice of a sage, his still beating heart exposed for us all to see.

   While Eppel’s words can be brimming with satire, wry humour, self-deprecation, gentle self-teasing, by contrast, the landscape the younger Togara Muzanenhemo paints appears more mystical, more spiritual, more idealistic, more ardent: an enticing window we can only hope to look into but perhaps not enter, lacking as we undoubtedly do, the vision of this brilliant poet.

   Muzanenhemo’s poems and prose are memorable explorations of many worlds, home and abroad, his own intimate experiences and those learned from the books and photographs of the world of history. 

   At times he opens a time capsule as in ‘The Texan’ where he beautifully describes the rescue of an aviator ‘From Weeks Field the sun hangs uncertain, the air sharpened by the curse of razored winds -….’ Again in the ‘Bluegrass Country’ he unearths the story of the jockey Isaac Murphy who won the Kentucky Derby three times. Forgotten for many years we hear the painful story of his exhumation as he is reburied away from his wife who he lay buried alongside for decades ‘….my head in your arms forgotten…..the music of unwanted distance grating loud with what can only be the memory of an intimate age’. But Muzanenhemo’s voice resonates most where he writes of his own feelings, when his own sensuality becomes enmeshed with the characters he brings to life, as in ‘Peruvian Sunsets’, ‘He pressed his weight harder against her skin. His sweet smoky breath boiling deep in the atoll of her collarbone….Kissed him. Lips, hard against his. Mouth, flat against his mouth’.  

   Muzanenhemo gently moves from romantic longing as in 'Desire', ’But… he also thought of how her face would melt at the sight of him…..’ to the epic disturbing ‘Game of Twelve Moons’ where ‘…His tears fell silently. Sparkled. Moonlight glistened off grass. This is how our deepest miseries are made to shine, he thought.’  He slowly weaves his magic through the pages of this eclectic collection moving from observation to personal reflection, poetry to prose but always with the artistry of the esoteric expertise that few ever possess and even fewer share through poems.

   Textures is a celebration of life and love in all forms: its beauty and its cruelty. The exquisite fabric woven by Togara Muzanenhamo and John Eppel in this collection will remain to be enjoyed over and over by all those fortunate enough to buy this book.

  The feisty independent amaBooks are to be congratulated, together with two of the most outstanding protagonists from this country of poets. 

Reviewed by Pat Brickhill

Textures, by John Eppel and Togara Muzanenhamo

ISBN: 978-0-7974-9498-5      amaBooks, Bulawayo, December 2014