About the Book
The situation in Zimbabwe represents one of the worst humanitarian emergencies today. This book asks the question: How did a country with so much promise—a stellar education system, a growing middle class, a sophisticated economic infrastructure, a liberal constitution, and an independent judiciary—go so wrong? In their own words, Zimbabweans recount their experiences of losing their homes, land, livelihoods, and families as a direct result of political violence. They describe being tortured in detention, firebombed at work, or beaten up or raped to “punish” votes for the opposition. Those forced to flee to neighboring countries recount their escapes: cutting through fences, swimming across crocodile-infested rivers, and entrusting themselves to human smugglers. This book includes Zimbabweans of every age, class, and political conviction, from farm laborers to academics, doctors to artists, opposition leaders to ordinary Zimbabweans; men and women simply trying to survive as a once-thriving nation heads for collapse.
About the Editors & Foreword Author:
Peter Orner is the author of two novels (Love and Shame and Love and The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo), two short story collections (Esther Stories and Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge), and editor of two books of non-fiction/oral history (Underground America and Hope Deferred). He is co-host of a radio program on KWMR/ Point Reyes, CA called Casual Footsteps with John McCrea and co-owner of a bookstore called the Book Exchange.
Annie Holmes was born in Zambia and raised in Zimbabwe. She has taught high school, run a book editing department, made documentaries and television, and led communications for feminist organizing and health research in the U.S. and UK. She now lives in London, but Zimbabwe is always home.
Brian Chikwava is a London-based Zimbabwean writer and author of the novel Harare North, which won the Outstanding First Creative Published Work category in Zimbabwe’s National Arts Merit Awards and was also longed listed for the George Orwell Prize. He is a previous winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing and a former Charles Pick Fellow at the University of East Anglia. Chikwava is currently working on his second novel.
Praise for Hope Deferred:
Hope Deferred might be the most important publication to have come out of Zimbabwe in the past thirty years.
Alexandra Fuller for Harper’s Magazine
Related Resources
View the Lesson Plans
The lessons use oral history to promote a nuanced understanding of the Zimbabwean people.
Book Club Discussion Questions
Use these questions to encourage meaningful discussions about the book.
Radio Interview on WAMU 88.5
The book’s editors are interviewed on the Kojo Nnamdi Show on WAMU 88.5.More from the Book Series
How We Go Home: Voices From Indigenous North America
Lavil: Life, Love, and Death in Port-Au-Prince
Out of Exile: Narratives from the Abducted and Displaced People of Sudan
Invisible Hands: Voices From the Global Economy
