Writing and reading Zimbabwe in the global literary market: A case of four novelists

ABSTRACT

Utilizing and extending Kwasi Wiredu’s concept of conceptual decolonization and self-exorcism, this article makes observations about the ideological underpinnings and literary trajectory of post-2000 Zimbabwean fiction in English through readings of four novels: Harare North by Brian Chikwava, We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo, The Book of Memory by Petina Gappah, and The Maestro, The Magistrate and The Mathematician by Tendai Huchu. Chikwava, Bulawayo, Gappah, and Huchu self-consciously depict Zimbabwe in stereotypical terms to secure publishing contracts and to ensure the international marketability of their fiction. At the same time, they show that they are conceptually decolonized by employing insurrectionary tactics of self-exorcism which register their resistance to banal profit-driven portrayals of Zimbabwe. Thus, the article explores the paradoxical situation or what Mohammad Shabangu has called the “double bind” of how these writers employ and deploy stereotypes to ensure success in the global literary market while, at the same time, undermining them.

KEYWORDS:

• No Violet Bulawayo
• Brian Chikwava
• conceptual decolonization
• Petina Gappah
• Tendai Huchu
• Zimbabwe

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Gappah’s novel was reviewed by, among other newspapers, The New York Times (USA), The Observer (UK), Star Tribune (USA), The Los Angeles Times (USA), The Guardian (UK), The Independent (UK), The Financial Times (UK), Minneapolis Star Tribune (USA), Sunday Express (UK), The Sunday Times (UK), The Times (UK), and The Irish Times.

2. Huchu subsequently read for a PhD in creative writing at the University of Manchester.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Isaac Ndlovu

Isaac Ndlovu is a senior lecturer in the English Department at the University of Venda, South Africa. His research interests are African narratives of crime and imprisonment, contemporary South African and Zimbabwean fiction, and life writing. Ndlovu’s recent publications inlcude: “Rewriting the Colonial Gaze? Black Middle Class Constructions of Africa in Sihle Khumalo’s Travel Writing” in a/b: Auto/Biography Studies (2020), “Writing in and about Prison, Childhood Albinism and Human Temporality in Petina Gappah’s The Book of Memory” in Journal of Literary Studies (2018), and “Inside Out: Gendered and (De)politicised Representations of the Contemporary South African Prison” in The Journal of Commonwealth Literature (2017).