Looking for a good read? Here’s a list of books that are on my ‘Zimbabwe’ bookshelf at home.

They’re books that I’ve either bought myself, or been gifted by friends and family members. Some of the authors are also my friends or family members; some are people I wish to meet some day; many of them are personally aspirational to me in their writing. Zimbabwe books are often discounted on Amazon (and I am an affiliate), so I’ve included hyperlinks to there, unless stated otherwise. If you’re based in Zimbabwe, or want to support an independent business, please contact your local bookshop.

My ‘Zimbabwe’ bookshelf: book recommendations

Out of Darkness, Shining Light

This is the story of the body of Bwana Daudi, the Doctor, the explorer David Livingstone – and the sixty-nine men and women who carried his remains for 1,500 miles across the African interior

View this book’s details on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3AJkgiw

The Book of Memory

Moving between the vibrant townships of the poor and the suburbs and country retreats of the rich, The Book of Memory is a compelling, contemporary tale of love, obsession and the cruelty of fate.

View this book’s details on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3nWtzUx

READ BETH’S REVIEW OF THIS BOOK HERE:

https://www.greatzimbabweguide.com/the-book-of-memory-book-review/

An Elegy for Easterly

Petina Gappah’s characters may have ordinary hopes and dreams, but they are living in a world where a loaf of bread costs half a million dollars – a country expected to have only four presidents in a hundred years.

View this book’s details on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3O1loRm

Rotten Row

It is just after nine o’clock in the morning. Gidza will die in exactly forty-three minutes and thirteen seconds. ‘Rotten Row’ is the Criminal Division of Harare, and the courts and the unfortunates who pass through them are the subjects of this mesmerising collection of stories.

View this book’s details on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3yYYi9I

Writing Free

In this fifth anthology of Zimbabwean short stories from Weaver Press fifteen writers respond to the topic of writing free, and offer their thoughts about how and why they wrote as they did.

View this book’s details on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3yrZUY4

Sunflowers in Your Eyes (Short Stories)

An important anthology of four vibrant young women poets from Zimbabwe edited by internationally acclaimed and multi-award winning poet, Menna Elfyn.

View this book’s details on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3uGR1sL

The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe

Journalist Douglas Rogers tells the eye-opening, harrowing and, at times, surprisingly funny story of his parents’ struggle for survival in war-torn Zimbabwe.

View this book’s details on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3aAjn10

This September Sun

Winner of Book of the Year in Zimbabwe, This September Sun is haunting and moving novel which follows Ellie, a shy young girl growing up in modern Zimbabwe.

View this book’s details on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3c1NEWN

We Need New Names

‘To play the country-game, we have to choose a country. Everybody wants to be the USA and Britain and Canada and Australia and Switzerland and them. Nobody wants to be rags of countries like Congo, like Somalia, like Iraq, like Sudan, like Haiti and not even this one we live in – who wants to be a terrible place of hunger and things falling apart?’

View this book’s details on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3yCjn8C

READ BETH’S REVIEW OF THIS BOOK HERE:

https://www.greatzimbabweguide.com/we-need-new-names-book-review

More books continued below the image …

The Hairdresser of Harare

In this delicious and devastating first novel, which The Guardian named one of its ten best contemporary African books, Caine Prize finalist Tendai Huchu (The Maestro, the Magistrate, and the Mathematician) portrays the heart of contemporary Zimbabwean society with humor and grace.

View this book’s details on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3yziEFf

Harare North

This is the story of a stranger in a strange land – one of the thousands of illegal immigrants seeking a better life in England – with a past he is determined to hide.

View this book’s details on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3NXGfVL

Absent. the English Teacher

‘When George J. George mistook his white Ford Escort for the moon, he knew his time was up.’ When Mr George loses his job teaching English at a private secondary school in Bulawayo, ‘his pension payout, after forty years of full-time service, bought him two jam doughnuts and a soft tomato.’

View this book’s details on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3RGd4tF

Far From Home

Katie and Tariro are worlds apart but their lives are linked by a terrible secret, gradually revealed in this compelling and dramatic story of two girls grappling with the complexities of adolescence, family and a painful colonial legacy.

View this book’s details on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3RtChqT

Zimbabwe: Years of Hope and Despair

British diplomat Philip Barclay witnessed the downfall of what used to be Africa’s finest country, culminating in the tumultuous events of 2008 when Zimbabwe’s people voted against Robert Mugabe.

View this book’s details on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3PnOeMS

Out of Shadows

For Robert Jacklin – packed off without warning to boarding school in Zimbabwe – everything is terrifyingly new.

View this book’s details on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3AS1tkS

READ BETH’S REVIEW OF THIS BOOK HERE:

Dust Diaries

A few years ago, Owen Sheers stumbled upon a dusty book in his father’s study by the extraordinary Arthur Cripps, part-time lyric poet and full-time unorthodox missionary, who served in Rhodesia for 50 years from 1902.

View this book’s details on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3PpvQU7

The Chef, the Bird and the Blessing

Compelling to the last page, The Chef, the Bird and the Blessing is a story about the power of suppressed memory, of friendship, and of our relationship with the natural world. (The book is not necessarily set in Zimbabwe but the author is associated with Zimbabwe.)

View this book’s details on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3IwmjZ3

Shona-English/English-Shona Dictionary

Shona, or ChiShona, a Bantu language spoken by eight million people in Zimbabwe and Mozambique, is the official and most widely-spoken language of Zimbabwe.

View this book’s details on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3uDW25i

African pens: New writing from southern Africa 2007

(Disclaimer: I am one of the writers in this anthology, and am proud to be associated with such prestigious names as JM Coetzee and Henrietta Rose-Innes.)

Moral and creative courage marks these new stories from young writers of the SADC region – They say what they want and confront what they must, unconstrained by past notions of what can or should be voiced.

View this book’s details on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3yZyqum

Sins of Omission

An eclectic mix of stories set in Zimbabwe, at widely different times

View this book’s details on the publisher’s website here: https://www.jumpingfrogbooks.net/sins-of-omission

Beja

Ali and Salma are Beja people, living in the hauntingly beautiful but harsh hills of the Red Sea region in the Horn of Africa. (The book is not set in Zimbabwe but is by a Zimbabwean author.)

View this book’s details on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3uDXDbi

Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa

Growing up in Rhodesia in the 1960s, Peter Godwin inhabited a magical and frightening world of leopard-hunting, lepers, witch doctors, snakes and forest fires.

View this book’s details on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3AFNChH

The Ghosts of Eden

This is a superb epic about love, medicine and cultural identities with a huge African and European cast which concludes on the shores of the Indian ocean. (This book is not set in Zimbabwe but it is in this section of my bookshelf!)

View this book’s details on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3caEiYL

Fortunate

Beth Jenkins, locum doctor, semi-bereaved wife runs away from home at the age of twenty-eight and a half and becomes heroine of a revolution.

View this book’s details on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3Pq27dp

READ BETH’S REVIEW OF THIS BOOK HERE:

https://www.greatzimbabweguide.com/fortunate-book-review/

Zimbabwe (Bradt Travel Guides)

The new, fourth edition of Bradt’s Zimbabwe remains the most authoritative guide available to one of southern Africa’s premier wildlife and cultural destinations.

View this book’s details on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3AS6fPk (Linking to the 2019 edition)

The Zimbabwe Art Book

Edited by Branko Unkovski Korica, The Zimbabwe Art Book aims to enlighten, educate and inform its audience on Zimbabwe’s Art in both a historical analysis and descriptive focus on the formal attributes of artworks housed within the Permanent Collection of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe

This was a gift from Zimbabwe; I’m not sure how you can get hold of a copy via online outlets!

Zimbabwe Craft

This book was also printed and purchased in Zimbabwe; I can’t find international online sales outlets, but check out https://zimbabwecrafts.com.

What books do you think I should add to my bookshelf? Let me know in the comments below.
If you would like to write a review of a Zimbabwean book for this website, we would love to hear from you. Please use the Contact us page.

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