Bulawayo, NoViolet.Glory.Viking, 2022.
NoViolet Bulawayo's bold new novel follows the fall of the Old Horse, the long-serving leader of a fictional country, and the drama that follows for a rumbustious nation of animals on the path to true liberation. Inspired by the unexpected fall by coup in November 2017 of Robert G. Mugabe, Zimbabwe's president of nearly four decades, Gloryshows a country's imploding, narrated by a chorus of animal voices that unveil the ruthlessness required to uphold the illusion of absolute power and the imagination and bulletproof optimism to overthrow it completely. And at the center of this tumult is Destiny, a young goat who returns to Jidada to bear witness to revolution and to recount the unofficial history and the potential legacy of the females who have quietly pulled the strings here.

Bulawayo, NoViolet.We Need New Names.Reagan Arthur Books, 2013.
Darling is only ten years old, and yet she must navigate a fragile and violent world. In Zimbabwe, Darling and her friends steal guavas, try to get the baby out of young Chipo's belly, and grasp at memories of Before. Before their homes were destroyed by paramilitary policemen, before the school closed, before the fathers left for dangerous jobs abroad. But Darling has a chance to escape: she has an aunt in America. She travels to this new land in search of America's famous abundance only to find that her options as an immigrant are perilously few.

Dangarembga, Tsitsi.Nervous Conditions.Graywolf Press, 2021.
Two decades before Zimbabwe would win independence and ended white minority rule, thirteen-year-old Tambudzai Sigauke embarks on her education. On her shoulders rest the economic hopes of her parents, siblings, and extended family, and within her burns the desire for independence. She yearns to be free of the constraints of her rural village and thinks she’s found her way out when her wealthy uncle offers to sponsor her schooling. But she soon learns that the education she receives at his mission school comes with a price.

Gappah, Petina.An Elegy for Easterly: Stories.Faber & Faber, 2009.
In her spirited debut collection, the Zimbabwean writer Petina Gappah brings us the resilience and inventiveness of the people who struggle to live under Robert Mugabe’s regime. She takes us across the city of Harare, from the townships beset by power cuts to the manicured lawns of privilege and corruption, where wealthy husbands keep their first wives in the “big houses” while their unofficial second wives wait in the “small houses,” hoping for a promotion. Despite their circumstances, the characters in An Elegy for Easterly are more than victims—they are all too human, with as much capacity to inflict pain as to endure it. They struggle with the larger issues common to all people everywhere: failed promises, unfulfilled dreams, and the yearning for something to anchor them to life.

Hove, Chenjerai.Bones.Weaver Press, 2021. Originally print in 1989.
Bones is a powerful, heart-rending novel that provides a sensitive evocation of Marita, a farm worker, whose only son joined the freedom fighters in Zimbabwe's war of liberation. He does not return after the war and Marita is determined to find him or find out what happened to him. This is perhaps a single clear theme in a landscape where women, particularly the poor and the marginalised, suffer many layers of oppression. Marita's courage and endurance are reconstructed through the memories of those who knew her in a language steep in poetry and Shona idiom.

Huchu, Tendai.The Hairdresser of Harare, Ohio University Press, 2015.
Vimbai is the best hairdresser in Mrs. Khumalo’s salon, and she is secure in her status until the handsome, smooth-talking Dumisani shows up one day for work. Despite her resistance, the two become friends, and eventually, Vimbai becomes Dumisani’s landlady. He is as charming as he is deft with the scissors, and Vimbai finds that he means more and more to her. Yet, by novel’s end, the pair’s deepening friendship used or embraced by Dumisani and Vimbai with different futures in mind—collapses in unexpected brutality. The novel is an acute portrayal of a rapidly changing Zimbabwe. In addition to Vimbai and Dumisani’s personal development, the book shows us how social concerns shape the lives of everyday people.

Lessing, Doris.The Grass is Singing,Perennial Classics, 2000. Originally print in 1950.
Set in Southern Rhodesia under white rule, Doris Lessing's first novel is at once a riveting chronicle of human disintegration, a beautifully understated social critique, and a brilliant depiction of the quiet horror of one woman's struggle against a ruthless fate. Mary Turner is a self-confident, independent young woman who becomes the depressed, frustrated wife of an ineffectual, unsuccessful farmer. Little by little the ennui of years on the farm works its slow poison. Mary's despair progresses until the fateful arrival of Moses, an enigmatic black servant. Locked in anguish, Mary and Moses—master and slave—are trapped in a web of mounting attraction and repulsion, until their psychic tension explodes with devastating consequences.

Marechera, Dambudzo.Black Sunlight.Penguin Classics, 2010. Originally print in 1980.
In an unspecified setting the stream-of-consciousness narrative of this cult novel traces the fortunes of a group of anarchists in revolt against a military-fascist-capitalist opposition. The protagonist is photojournalist Chris, whose camera lens becomes the device through which the plot is cleverly unraveled. In Dambudzo Marechera’s second experimental novel, he parodies African nationalist and racial identifications as part of an argument that notions of an ‘essential African identity’ were often invoked to authorize a number of totalitarian regimes across Africa.

Mungoshi, Charles.Waiting for the Rain.Zimbabwe Publishing House, 2000.
The award-winning writer Charles Mungoshi is recognized in Africa, and internationally, as one of the continent's most powerful writers today. This early novel deals with the pain and dislocation of the clash of the old and new ways - the educated young man determined to go overseas, and the elders of the family believing his duty is to stay and head the family.

Staunton, Irene ed.Writing Still: New Stories from Zimbabwe.Weaver Press, 2003.
The history of Zimbabwe has always been reflected in its oral and written literature. Much of the serious fiction written in the 1980s and early 1990s focused on the effects of Zimbabwe's war of liberation. Little has yet been written about post-independence Zimbabwe and the complex and challenging issues that have arisen in the last twenty years. This anthology of twenty-two short stories provides a representative sample of the range and quality of writing in Zimbabwe at the turn of the century, and an impressionistic reflection of the years since independence in 1980.

Tshuma, Novuyo Rosa.House of Stone. W. W. Norton & Company, 2019.
In the chronic turmoil of Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, Abednego and Agnes Mlambos teenage son, Bukhosi, has gone missing. Erudite, enigmatic Zamani, their lodger, seems to be their last, best hope for finding him. In his eagerness to help, Zamani is almost a part of the family but almost isn’t nearly enough. Ingratiating himself to Mama Agnes and feeding alcoholic Abednegos addiction, he is desperate to extract their life stories and make their family history his own. As the Mlambos pray for Bukhosis return, Zamani will stop at nothing to make a home for himself and each of them must confront the past to find a place in the future. Bursting with wit, seduction, and dark humor, Novuyo Rosa Tshumas unflinching epic about the fall of Rhodesia and the turbulent birth of Zimbabwe celebrates the persistence of the oppressed in a nation seeking its identity amid political chaos and violence.

Vera. Yvonne.The Stone Virgins.Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003.
In 1980, after decades of guerilla war against colonial rule, Rhodesia earned its hard-fought-for independence from Britain. Less than two years thereafter when Mugabe rose to power in the new Zimbabwe, it signaled the beginning of brutal civil unrest that would last nearly a half decade more. With The Stone Virgins, Yvonne Vera examines the dissident movement from the perspective of two sisters living in a small township outside of Bulawayo. In a portrait painted in successive impressions of life before and after the liberation, Vera explores the quest for dignity and a centered existence against a backdrop of unimaginable violence; the twin instincts of survival and love; the rival pulls of township and city life; and mankind's capacity for terror, beauty, and sacrifice. One sister will find a reason for hope. One will not make it through alive.