A white Zimbabwean family in post-independence Zimbabwe is turned upside down when a dark secret comes to light.
HARARE VOICES & BEYOND explores a multitude of topics including family, money, identity, love, substance abuse, mental health, and politics. The timeline is nonlinear and the narration of each chapter jumps around between different characters, sometimes switching within a chapter. It wasn’t clear at the start of all chapters who the narrator was, making it quite confusing at times to figure out who was speaking. I had to reread many sections because of this. I found the dialogue awkward in that most characters had the same sort of highly educated feel to their voices, despite being from different backgrounds and living different lives. It seemed odd and added to the difficulty in determining who was speaking. Unfortunately, these things impacted the book negatively overall for me. If these hadn’t been issues, the story would have been much stronger as the premise was definitely interesting and there were a lot of thought-provoking questions asked throughout. I liked that this was set in the post-independence period of Zimbabwe as that’s not a time that I’ve read much about. The ending was shocking. I’d recommend giving HARARE VOICES & BEYOND a try to anyone who finds the synopsis intriguing. I would be interested in reading other work by the author.
Thank you to Kharis Publishing and Andrew Chatora for the giveaway copy.
HARARE VOICES & BEYOND explores a multitude of topics including family, money, identity, love, substance abuse, mental health, and politics. The timeline is nonlinear and the narration of each chapter jumps around between different characters, sometimes switching within a chapter. It wasn’t clear at the start of all chapters who the narrator was, making it quite confusing at times to figure out who was speaking. I had to reread many sections because of this. I found the dialogue awkward in that most characters had the same sort of highly educated feel to their voices, despite being from different backgrounds and living different lives. It seemed odd and added to the difficulty in determining who was speaking. Unfortunately, these things impacted the book negatively overall for me. If these hadn’t been issues, the story would have been much stronger as the premise was definitely interesting and there were a lot of thought-provoking questions asked throughout. I liked that this was set in the post-independence period of Zimbabwe as that’s not a time that I’ve read much about. The ending was shocking. I’d recommend giving HARARE VOICES & BEYOND a try to anyone who finds the synopsis intriguing. I would be interested in reading other work by the author.
Thank you to Kharis Publishing and Andrew Chatora for the giveaway copy.