Harare Voices and Beyond by Andrew Chatora was wild and beautiful and intense! I was truly thankful to have gotten to read this before most people! I would like to purchase this one for my physical library!

This is a pretty solid collection.

I was not personally a fan of the writing style but I can see that many readers will enjoy it.

It took me a while to finish this book, because I felt there wasn't much depth to the characters and though their despair, the changing times post-colonial Zimbabwe, the privileges and assumption of that and just a family tearing apart made me soldier on in reading, this personally was not such an impactful read to me. I do know that someone else may find elation in reading it, or enjoy (at some point I did too) the vignettes, well, thank you to the writer and Publishers for the eARC.

Dnf at 20%.

While parts of the story were interesting up to this point, I found the white characters flat, and unconvincing. I kept wondering why they were even white; it didn't seem realistic, or bring anything to the story. Similarly, I found the (multiple, up to this point) sex and sexual abuse scenes either gratuitous, or poorly handled. The treatment of female characters felt very sexist to me.

My main gripe, however, is the writing style, and the way language was used. Although I am familiar with this in Zimbabwean writing, for this novel it felt unnatural and stilted.

I would like to read more from this author, because I believe they have many more stories in them.

Thank you for the ARC.

Not normally the type of read I would choose. Out of my comfort zone however I found it an intriguing and great read. I read it through very quickly.

I was quite excited to read this one and it didn't disappoint at all! It examines post-independent Zimbabwe and all of the themes it touches on are ensuring that we look at our characters through the lens of humanity.

I hate to do it, but I had to DNF this book. It seemed so promising BUT I just don't like the writing style. It's as if the narrator is talking to me instead of telling the story, Additionally, the story just isn't keeping my attention.

Andrew Chatora's book of linked short stories titled Harare Voices and Beyond takes on the ambitious challenge of telling a complex story about a complicated city, a devastated country and the multiple cultures that coexist within, and ultimately falls a little short.

Zimbabwe's history - both long-past and more recent - has left behind a brutal legacy of racism, inequality and corruption. The long overdue but badly-botched Land Reforms took Zimbabwe from being "Africa's breadbasket" to becoming a country crippled by sanctions.

The price for this was paid not only by the white minority that had for so long enjoyed unfair privileges emanating from the country's history of being colonized by Britain, but also by the mass of ordinary citizens who paid the real price for those sanctions, while corrupt politicians like Robert Mugabe's cronies squandered or simply pocketed a large part of this beautiful nation's resources.

The book attempts to provide a layered look at life in modern-day Zimbabwe, from the perspective of the super rich and/or wildly corrupt to that of the disadvantaged and disenfranchised. It tries to tell the stories of the predator, the prey and everyone else in between.

And therein lies a large part of the problem. There are simply too many voices speaking at once, and they are often not clearly differentiated enough. The reader will spend valuable time trying to figure out who is talking, when that time would be better spent understanding the complexities of the plotline and the society that is being portrayed here.

There is a real danger of people getting fed up and DNF-ing the book. Which would be a shame, because to be fair, despite its flaws, the story this book tells is actually quite interesting.

What appear to be increasingly disparate threads are to some extent brought together by the end of the narrative. And in the process, we encounter a diverse cast of characters, and gain insights into their lives, as well as into why the current state of Zimbabwe is what it is.

The use of the English language can sometimes be a little strange in the characters' voices, even for the white, privileged and/or educated characters in the book. From the time I spent in Southern Africa myself, I think this is partly a result of the postcolonial adaptation of the language into a more "local" form of English. There's nothing wrong with that, and it is something that a reader may wish to take into account if they find some of the sentence structures clunky, or the grammar a bit unusual.

All in all, I do recommend this book to people who are interested in finding more about different cultures in general, and Southern Africa in particular, as well as to those who have the patience to look beyond the technical shortcomings of the writing and appreciate what it has to offer in terms of storytelling. The book gives us a unique insight into modern Zimbabwe as well as its troubled past as Rhodesia.

(Note: I received a free copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review - review also submitted to Goodreads and under processing at Amazon UK)

I found the writing in this one to be dry and it did nothing to move the plotline forward. I was interested in getting into the family drama and the unfolding events, but the writing made this a very unsatisfying reading experience.

I was interested in this book because I recently read ‘Glory’ and I wanted to read more about Zimbabwe.

Sorry to be negative, but unfortunately this work was difficult to appreciate because it was in need of considerable editing and reworking. Much of the story is told through dialogue but the conversations seemed too obviously to be the opinions of the writer somewhat randomly distributed among the characters. The dialogue itself was awkward, and did not read like authentic human conversation. Similarly, some of the scenes did not seem very realistic, such as the scene where a couple discusses a miscarriage with a doctor.

A book of essays or a memoir might have worked better for the subjects covered in the book.

I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book is a damning indictment of post-independence Zimbabwe. The writing style is as blunt as the reality it portrays. The opening chapter sets the tone: the white Zimbabwean Rhys and his mother are in Chikurubhi Prison, on trial for the murder of Rhys's younger brother Julian. The decision on their case has been postponed indefinitely, illustrating the country's failing judicial system.

We learn the details of the murder via numerous back stories. The voices include not only those of Rhys's family, but of young urban men like Onai and Munyaradzi; of the hard working maid, Sisi Maria; and of a biracial British woman named Marina. All the stories highlight the political corruption of Zimbabwe in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. While a small elite enrich themselves by siphoning off the country's resources, the majority of Zimbabweans face growing unemployment, disintegrating social services and run away inflation. Crime, especially drugs trafficking, is the only job around for Onai and Munyaradzi; xenophobia drives Sisi Maria's son out of the country; Marina's powerful king pin lover may or may not buy her way out of prison; and government-sponsored land invasions have lost Rhys's family their once prosperous farm.

Do expect a lot of drugs and criminal behaviour in this novel; some very cliched sex scenes; and unending, but sadly realistic, complaints about the many failings of the Mugabe-era government. This is an angry polemic against political corruption. It might be useful reading for someone interested in recent Zimbabwean history, but lacks the beauty and nuances of writers like NoViolet Bulawayo, Tsitsi Dangarembga or Dambudzo Marechera.
whose only chance for employment comes from drugs trafficking;

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, Andrew Chatora, and NetGalley for the DRC.
Thank you to Kharis Publishing and Andrew Chatora for the giveaway print copy.

This book had a lot of interesting twists and turns out it was like a love story End a mystery. Beginning of the book The mother and daughter were both In jail.. The book takes off from there and there is a trial because somebody was murdered. They They talk about the Sam bonway And how the lamb was taken from the white people. It's very interesting how this woman named Maria was involved in a lot of crazy stuff.. She had a lot of friends and Had a very good friend who's working certain better Her. Sophia had a very interesting background as well this was her mother. Mother want to England and so did Maria. She ran a man named mark in London. He was very abusive to her and people tried to tell her to get away from him Mark had a lot of shady deals like drugs and sex trafficking. Marie didn't really understand all this in the beginning but she realized at the end she had to walk away her friends kept telling her to do this. The chapters in the book would tell what was going on and somehow they were related to the chapter before him A lot of people were in limbo because it wasn't English colony at 1 time but the peopl Could not go back because it was under a new government. It was interesting how they were trying to move forward in this country but it was very difficult. At the end of the book there's a lot of surprises and this will really will shock you I was

This book has left me kind of speechless. I think the author did a great job addressing the lives of black and white Zimbabweans experiencing corruption. I couldn’t put it down, but it also didn’t follow a flow that made this an easy read. The plot felt choppy and the dialogue kind of made me feel like I was reading the script of a soap opera… but still, I couldn’t put it down!! For some readers, I think the dialogue between characters would have been a big issue because the flow of conversations felt scripted and unnatural considering their different “positions in life” - every character talking like they’re a PHD candidate, but instead are involved in the under ground drug world, drug users or participating in corrupt governmental politics. I do have to say the ending made my eyes bulge out of my head. Absolutely shocking!

I was excited when I saw this book and was able to get a copy. I really enjoy getting to read stories from places I haven’t been and get a glimpse into cultures I have never experienced. This book definitely painted what felt like a brutally honest picture of Zimbabwe and some of the struggles the people there have and I really liked that. I thought that the characters weren’t developed quite enough and I found it very confusing to figure out who was talking when. It took me a while to understand that all of the characters perspectives we saw related to the initial two prisoners sharing their experiences of how they ended up in the Zimbabwean prison they were in. I mostly understand where all of the pieces fit by the end, but I thought that with a little structure the story could have been so much more clear while still capturing the culture as well as it did.

An Intelligent and Insightful Novel!
I initially struggled to get into the book, courtesy of it's out of sequence narrative structure style- which is haphazard. Then there were also numerous flashback scenes to contend with. But the penny dropped in the end! The author skilfully ties all the loose ends in the denouement section of the book, especially the gut wrenching revelations in relation to both Marina and Rhys. It's a clever technique that the author employs a dual narrative in which the story is being recounted mainly by two inmates from prison.

For me, the breathtaking ending was the aha moment! I got it. That's the point of the book. It's supposed to be difficult. It's supposed to be confusing! For is that not in sync with the dark subject matter the author is dealing with here: the wider ramifications of crystal meth consumption, domestic violence, child abuse and incest? These are difficult subjects, but the author handles them quite well. I look foward to other books by this author.

I really wanted to like this one, but ended up DNFing for two reasons. First, the quality of the prose felt like fan fiction - something I might read on a website. The dialogue was unrealistic and the writing was lacking (sorry!). Second, there were phrases that felt like smut and made me feel so ikcy that I couldn't keep reading (some examples: "my long fingers stroking the inner crevices between my supple thighs" or "tall, voluptuous with pointed nipples, these physical attributes were further accentuated by a ravishing smile"). Ugh. I'm sorry, but no. It's a pet peeve when male writers objectify women like that. Giving it two stars instead of one because we need more stories from Zimbabwe. This one just isn't it.

On its website, inspirational and faith publisher Kharis Publishing says it is committed to publishing the message that is on potential writers’ hearts, the ones that only they have seen. In attempting to understand the contents of this book it helps to assume, although we do not know, that the author is doing just that. Mr. Chatora was born in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, but now lives in England. In this book, he examines socio-economic issues particularly as they relate to exploitation, corruption, politicization of the judiciary and law enforcement, economic decline, and xenophobia, among other things.

The author appears to be well informed with a clearly articulated message. The story is told through dialogue, wherein characters discuss the issues under review. This creates a bolder statement as they are immersed in the experience or suffer from government policy, corruption, or exploitation. But conventions must be followed for dialogue to meet its carrying potential, and they are absent. This impacts reader investment and the overall reading experience. Examples would be the point of view change in each chapter coupled with the lack of speech tags. More problematic is the lack of individuation among the characters’ voices. The tone and diction reflect an educated speaker who communicates formally and employs an elevated vocabulary. This style suits Nhamo and Helen, but few others. Without vernacular, verbal shorthand among intimates, and street slang when appropriate, the dialogue is stilted. It simply doesn’t feel authentic or spontaneous.

The rating simply reflects technical shortcomings, but this will not be a barrier to many readers, so that needs to be clearly stated. Getting this story out is an admirable undertaking.

This novel truly is full of voices, which initially felt somewhat confusing to me as I tried to sort through who was who. When I settled in and simply let the voices speak, began to see this city and country, and all of the topics that author Andrew Chatora wove in, what resulted was a fascinating, varied tapestry.

I have chosen to include this novel in my Wayfarers Book Club picks for 2023 because it is so unique and will spark a great deal of conversation.

4/5 stars! The cultural representation of this story was so well-written and interesting. As someone who has never been to Zimbabwe, the author made the site feel real and 3-dimensional to me. The story had an important message to share and I felt like I learned so much. I appreciated following the feud, twists, and turns of the book. Overall, would recommend reading it and will read further books by this author.

I received an advance review copy for free through NetGalley, and I am leaving this review voluntarily