At a turbulent historical moment, Versions of Zimbabwe: New Approaches to Literature and Culture considers the relationships between Zimbabwe's creative literature, history and politics. It assumes that literature and culture cannot be understood separately from larger social trends; and that besides being legitimate subjects of study in themselves, through foregrounding literary and cultural issues, insights into the present crisis inflicting the country can be achieved. The book is the result of a collaboration of scholars from southern Africa and overseas, whose work emphasises hitherto overshadowed subjects of literature, exposing new and untried approaches to Zimbabwean writing.

Namuli, the lead character of this novel, makes her way from an isolated Ugandan village to international recognition. She encounters obstacles, prejudices and uncertainties about her own identity as a student, professional woman and mother. She experiences the enigmas of love, relationships and loss. The novel is based on a true story and aims to give readers an authentic picture of what it was like to live in Uganda from the 1950s through to the 1970s. Patricia Haward first came to Uganda is 1964. Since this time, she has worked extensively as a teacher and editor of African writers and literature.

New writing from southern Africa 2005 is the first book in a three–year series of the US $10 000 HSBC/SA PEN Literary Award. The award is targeted at young writers who are citizens of any country in the SADC (Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe).

Alex Agyei-Agyiri's first novel Unexpected Joy at Dawn has won Commendation in the 2005 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Best First Book Africa Region. A Ghanaian poet, playwright and short story writer, he has previously won the BBC Arts and Africa poetry award, the Ghana Association of writers' Literary Prize and the Valco Award for Literature.

"That divide between fact and fiction in the lives of ordinary people is what Agualusa has tackled with O Vendedor do Passados. Yet he has done so in a format that could easily be described as magical realism, one based in southern Africa. As part of this merging of history as story, numerous characters play a part in the narrative, from Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist, to South African high court judge Albie Sachs and Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa." - From a review by Richard Bartlett on the website of African Review of Books. Visit to read the full review.

In the year of Africa, S.A. Afolabi from Nigeria has won the sixth Caine Prize for African Writing, Africa's leading literary prize, for Monday Morning from Wasafiri, issue 41, spring 2004. The Chair of the judges, Baroness Young of Hornsey, announced the winner of the US$ 15,000 prize at a dinner held this evening (Monday, 4 July) in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. S.A. Afolabi was born in Kaduna, Nigeria and grew up in various countries, including the Congo, Canada, East Germany and Indonesia. He has been writing for over ten years and has had stories published in Wasafiri, London Magazine, Edinburgh Review, Pretext and others.

If you say, why don't you go back

Please don't ask me why don't I go back. Do you think I like staying? For discrimination and xenophobia? Suffering from malaria, cholera and typhoid in a foreign land. Do you think I like staying?

Seeking second hand clothes, If I could help myself, If I could rebuild my homeland. Do you think I like staying? Without my mother, father, sisters, and brother. Please don't ask me why don't I go back?

Understand that it is not simple or easy. I would if I could – world humanitarian community. Avoiding past memories, I can not remove my mind, My traditional culture is my nostalgic torture. The folktales of childhood, never old Never dead, stamped on my mind. I have normal feelings – I suffer for dignity.

Please don't kill my broken heart, by asking me Why don't you go back? I will if I can. I wouldn't stay a moment When the new dawn of peace comes.

- Hassan Ali Said, 6 December 2001. Hassan is an Ethiopian refugee in Uganda

Prof Francis Imbuga is best known for his satirical plays. But reading his latest novel, Miracle of Remera, one is left without doubt that the writer is equally a good novelist. This is the second novel on his long list of works, the first one, Shrine of Tears, having been published in 1993. The Miracle of Remera is a simple, loaded story. It is a story of the ravages of HIV/Aids particularly in Africa, where it has struck both rural and urban areas with the same vengeance.

This website is a space for conversation about the writing of Yvonne Vera, an African Women Writer from Zimbabwe. Vera died in April and her obituaries are listed on the website. Students from a class on African Women Writers at The George Washington University in Washington, DC wrote about Zimbabwe and Vera's books, 'Nehanda', 'The Stone Virgins', and 'Why Don't We Carve Other Animals'. Selected works are published on the website.

Versions of Zimbabwe: new approaches to literature and culture is a first of its kind: in a turbulent historical moment, the book asks questions about how Zimbabwe's creative literature may be related to its history and politics. The result of a collaboration of scholars situated both in Southern Africa and overseas, the book addresses Zimbabwean literature and culture from angles that have hitherto remained overshadowed.

This dissertation is a comparative study of the representations of Black-white heterosexual love in novels, published since the 1940s, by Black, white, male and female authors from the United States of America, Africa, and the Caribbean. It uses African-American feminist theories by bell hooks and the postcolonial theories by Ngugi wa Thiong'o to analyze the images the characters hold of each other and the lacking, ongoing or accomplished process of decolonizing the mind, as defined by Ngugi and hooks.

Volume 32 Number 103/March 2005 of Review of African Political Economy is now available on the Taylor & Francis web site.
The issue includes:
* Imperialism & African Social Formations by Lionel Cliffe;
* Class & protest in Africa: New waves by David Seddon, Leo Zeilig;
* Reaction & Resistance to Neo-liberalism in Zambia by Miles Larmer; 
* Sudan: a flawed peace process leading to a flawed peace by John Young.

This new anthology is the product of some seven years of writing, editing, collecting and collating of poetry emanating from Malawi. Many of the poems in the collection hark back to the time of major political changes between 1992 and 1994. The poets are predominantly women and men from Malawi, both new and established voices. They include: Steve Chimombo, Frank Chipasula, Zangaphee Anthony Nazome, Patrick O'Malley and Francis Sefe. Some poems by the Nigerian, Niyi Osundare, which he wrote for, and dedicated to Jack Mapanje, are also included.

A Collection of short stories and poems by twelve younger, or previously unpublished writers from Ghana. The publication was inspired by a literary workshop and creative writing competition on the subject of HIV/AIDS, conducted and judged by the established Ghanaian writers Esi Sutherland-Addy and Amma Darko, with the German author, Lutz van Dijk, and the German writer, Norman Ohler. Typical subjects of the pieces are AIDS in the context of love, friendship, guilt, sex and beliefs.

Fahamu has been sent a great collection of books published in Australia by Spinifex Press, an award-winning independent press publishing innovative and controversial books across a wide variety of subject areas. Spinifex publishes fiction, poetry and non-fiction. The books include:

* Unity Dow: The Screaming of the Innocent
* Unity Dow: Juggling Truths
* Unity Dow: Far and Beyond
* Rose Zwi: Last walk in Naryshkin Park
* Rose Zwi: Safe Houses
* Rose Zwi: Speak the Truth, Laughing
* Nawal El Saadawi: Walking through Fire
* Nawal El Saadawi: The Daughter of Isis: the autobiographs of Nawal El Saadawi
* Jonathan Morgan & The Bambani Women's Group: Long Life: positive HIV stories
* Kim Manresa (photographer): The Day Kadi Lost Part of Her Life

If you would be interested in reviewing any of these books for Pambazuka News, please get in touch with us ([email protected])

This remarkable collection of prison literature inspires with the eloquent idealism of prisoners of conscience through the ages. Just as the lone Chinese student confronted the tanks in Tiananmen Square, so too have prisoners of conscience challenged and emboldened with their rare courage. The contributors to this volume include many of the world’s finest writers: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Primo Levi, Irina Ratushinskaya, Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Versions of Zimbabwe: new approaches to literature and culture is a first of its kind: in a turbulent historical moment, the book asks questions about how Zimbabwe's creative literature may be related to its history and politics. The result of a collaboration of scholars situated both in Southern Africa and overseas, the book addresses Zimbabwean literature and culture from angles that have hitherto remained overshadowed.

Many African urban dwellers have to find ways of making a living within cities dominated by powerful economic and political interests. This book explores how they negotiate the spatial practices, politico-economic processes and social relations that entangle place, identity and power in urban sites.

Rampant market economics in today's world has led to violations of human rights. Koen de Feyter questions how far the international human rights system - focussing as it does on legal conventions and enforcement by state machinery - really provides effective protection against the adverse effects of globalization.

‘This study offers a comprehensive exploration of the work of Kwasi Wiredu, arguably Africa’s leading philosopher. It not only provides an insight into the richness of his thought but also the tensions by which it is traversed, both of which contribute to the energy that informs Wiredu’s work’. - F. Abiola Irele, Harvard University, USA.