Four books by writers from Zimbabwe, set there, that give a real sense of the place, starting with Nervous Conditions and We Need New Names.
Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions, set in 1960s colonial Rhodesia, is among the best-known novels by a Zimbabwean writer. Zimbabweans write in English, Shona and Ndebele, and the country's history, from white-minority rule in Rhodesia through independence in 1980 to the economic collapse of the 2000s, runs through much of the fiction.
Nervous Conditions traces a girl's fight for schooling amid family obligation and racial hierarchy. NoViolet Bulawayo's We Need New Names, shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2013, tells of children in the Paradise shantytown before the story moves to America. Petina Gappah's The Book of Memory is narrated from Chikurubi prison by an albino woman on death row, while her An Elegy for Easterly gathers stories of ordinary Zimbabweans living through hyperinflation and corruption.
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A girl's struggle for education in 1960s colonial Rhodesia reveals how gender, family obligation and racial hierarchy shaped rural and mission-school life.
Children in the Paradise shantytown face the collapse of the Zimbabwean economy and political violence, before the narrative moves to America.
A albino woman on death row in Chikurubi prison recalls her Harare childhood and the country's shifting fortunes.
Short stories capturing ordinary Zimbabweans' lives amid hyperinflation, corruption and political decline in the 2000s.
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