What to Read Now: Zimbabwe
Brian Chikwava
Asked to recommend three titles that would provide greater insight into Zimbabwe today, Brian Chikwava turned to both fiction and nonfiction, listing a novel, a memoir, and a collection of stories. Together they span Zimbabwe's pre-independence through the contemporary moment, including the new diaspora.
Bones
Chenjerai Hove
(Baobab Books)
A powerful, poetic novel (1998) that more or less captures the entire gamut of the Rhodesian peasant's experience, this story informed and inspired the movements pushing for the birth of the Republic of Zimbabwe.
The Last Resort: A Zimbabwe Memoir
Douglas Rogers
(Harmony Books)
While Hove's Bones delves into pre-independence Zimbabwe, Rogers's wry memoir-cum-travelogue is a deft account of the later years of the new republic. The Last Resort (2009) is one of the best books about the Zimbabwe of recent years.
An Elegy for Easterly
Petina Gappah
(Faber & Faber)
An outstanding and eclectic short-story collection (2009) encapsulating contemporary Zimbabwe. Humorous and poignant, the collection touches every level of society as well as the experience of the small nation's newly emergent diaspora.
November 2011
In this issue of WLT, a special section devoted to Post-Soviet Literature features recent work from Russia and other former republics, twenty years after the collapse of the regime.
Table of Contents
COVER FEATURE
Post-Soviet Literature: Twenty Years
After the Fall
- INTRO: "Twenty Years after the Collapse of the Soviet Union: Russian and East European Literature Today," Emily D. Johnson
- ESSAY: "Censorship in Russia: Old and New Faces," Nadezhda Azhgikhina
- ESSAY: "Poetry in the Cloud: An Experiment, Results, and n+1 Hypotheses," Kevin M. F. Platt
- Poetry by Igor Belov, Semyon Khanin, Artur Punte, Feodor Swarovski, Sergej Timofejev, Viktor Ivaniv, and Ksenia Shcherbinio
- FICTION: "Petrov and Markov," Oleg Woolf
- ESSAY: "Re-Visioning the Past: Russian Literary Classics in Film," Catharine Nepomnyashchy
- POETRY: "The Rock or, A Third Anecdote about Wallace Stevens," Grigory Kruzhkov
- EXCERPT: The Button, Iren Rozdobudko
READING LIST: WLT's post-Soviet reading list- New! VIDEO: Multimedia poetry from Orbita 4
SPECIAL SECTION
Zoran Živković
- "Zoran Živković: A Biographical Sketch," Michael Morrison
- "Rendezvous in Front of the House," Zoran Živković
- "The Metaphysical Fantasias of Zoran Živković," Michael Morrison
- FICTION: "The Teashop," Zoran Živković
- INTERVIEW: "Fantastika and the Literature of Serbia: A Conversation with Zoran Živković," Michael A. Morrison
- A Bibliography of the Works of Zoran Živković
INTERVIEWS
- "My Life as Cinema: A Conversation with Samuel Shimon," Kaitlin Hawkins
- "Literary Cairo, A Conversation with Samia Mehrez," Michelle Johnson
ESSAYS
FICTION
- "The Demon of Hunger," Tania Malyarchuk
- "Shiki Nagaoka: A Nose for Fiction," Mario Bellatin
POETRY
- Three Poems by Askold Bazhanov
- Two Poems, Alistair Noon
IN EVERY ISSUE
- LETTERS/EDITOR'S CHOICE
- BOOK CLUB: An Iraqi in Paris by Samuel Shimon
- AUTHOR PROFILE: Zoe Whittall
- WHAT TO READ NOW: Zimbabwe
- CITY PROFILE: Yerevan, Armenia
- INTERNATIONAL CRIME & MYSTERY: Meet "Bo from Ro": Building Romanian Crime Writing, J. Madison Davis
- OUTPOST: Los Angeles
