
Chimurenga
by Wendy Wright
This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.
Send NetGalley books directly to your Kindle or Kindle app
1
To read on a Kindle or Kindle app, please add kindle@netgalley.com as an approved email address to receive files in your Amazon account. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
2
Also find your Kindle email address within your Amazon account, and enter it here.
Pub Date Apr 28 2022 | Archive Date May 25 2022
The Book Guild | Book Guild Publishing
Talking about this book? Use #Chimurenga #NetGalley. More hashtag tips!
Description
Rhodesia, 1972.
Tessa Harmand is nine-years-old when a humiliating experience forever alters her naïve perception of the society in which she lives, forcing her to question her own attitude to her black compatriots – an attitude she’s inherited from her elders.
Nathan Owen is twelve-years-old, dark haired and inscrutable. To Tessa, he is a dead-pan, distant ghost flitting into view and then dissolving in a blink… but an odd conversation with him only serves to heighten Tessa’s new and unwelcome awareness of the political uncertainty.
As the first whisperings of the armed struggle that will transform Rhodesia into Zimbabwe gradually invade Tessa’s daily life, the adults in her world remain oddly dismissive, even as civil war becomes an inescapable reality. Tessa comes to realise that white dominated Africa belongs in the past; her optimism for the inevitable political change is shocking to a generation desperate to preserve what it has. But amid the chaos of a country fighting itself to reforge its identity, can Tessa hold on to what’s most important?
A Note From the Publisher
Available Editions
EDITION | Ebook |
ISBN | 9781915352101 |
PRICE | £4.99 (GBP) |
PAGES | 200 |
Featured Reviews

I found this to be an enjoyable read, I liked the writing syle and the story was really compelling with well developed charcaters. I do think that the book was lengthy though and so it sometimes felt like a struggle to get through, so my personal preference owuld have been to have it shorter but that is ust my opinion.

There is a lot of great information regarding the turbulent time in history when Rhodesia became Zimbabwe. There was a lot going on in those days before, during, and after the election that Mugabe won. The book itself is a coming-of-age story in a country where big changes are going on, at the same time big things are going in your own family, not to mention your own mind and body.
There were many things I liked about this book, since Zimbabwe is one of my favourite countries, and its history intrigues me, and I like to read coming-of-age stories vis-à-vis what goes on in the world. My problem with the book was that it was too long. It was hard to concentrate on the story itself due to it simply being too long. I liked the last third best.