Shebeen Tales: Messages from Harare - Softcover

9781897959169: Shebeen Tales: Messages from Harare
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In Shebeen Tales Zimbabwe's leading novelist offers a view of his country not from the perspective of the foreign correspondent or well-heeled visitor but that of the ordinary person who, with the help of dry wit and illegal beer, pokes fun at the rich and mighty. Struggling against madcap motorists, pompous bureaucrats and the other woes of life, the man in the shebeen sees modern Africa as it really is, not as press releases or tourist brochures would have us believe.
Chenjerai Hove looks straight in the eye of a society suffering from drought, economic hardship and AIDS, but does not succumb to despair. With a wry sense of humour, his pen celebrates a people who continue to live life to the full, to laugh and sing, to tell tall tales - whatever is thrown at them. Shebeen Tales is a series of literary snapshots that takes us into the very heart of modern Africa.

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From Publishers Weekly:
These short essays examine different aspects of life in Harare, Zimbabwe's capital, but Hove's (Bones) brevity gives some of these pieces a superficial feel. Still, they work as a native's intimate?occasionally painful?look at his own land and cover a lot of different topics without ever shying away from uncomfortable reality. His observations about women and their place in Zimbabwean culture are particularly incisive. Hove laments the use of women as ornamental airport greeters and describes an encounter with a prostitute, and her flip answers to his inquiries about AIDS: "'I will never make love with condoms,' she later tells us. 'It's like eating a sweet covered in plastic.'" A "shebeen" is a sort of speakeasy or illegal bar, and Hove writes casually of visiting one, getting a little drunk and having a line of "young girls of school-going age parade themselves as if to say, 'Which one of us?'" There is also a report on the place of drinking in Zimbabwean society, including a humorous list of beer hall names, which includes "rambanayi (go ahead and divorce)" and "makovhorosi (booze during lunch break with overall on)." Another essay explains how the Harare city council enacted laws that force squatters and homeless people out of the streets when important people visit. In an epilogue, Hove writes that his search for a "national psyche" sharpened his vision considerably. All told, this is a pleasant mishmash of more good bits than bad ones that serves as an introduction to Zimbabwe?but rarely is it more than that.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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  • PublisherSerif
  • Publication date1995
  • ISBN 10 1897959168
  • ISBN 13 9781897959169
  • BindingPaperback
  • Edition number2
  • Number of pages128
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