House of Stone

October 29, 2018
Set in 2007 Zimbabwe, Tshuma’s darkly humorous debut follows Zamani, a 20-something lodger who decides to integrate himself into the lives of his landlords after their teenage son, Bukhosi, vanishes while accompanying Zamani to an anti-Mugabe political rally. As parents Abednego and Agnes search for the teen and emotionally tailspin, Zamani begins calling the duo his surrogate parents and listens to their histories. After plying recovering alcoholic Abednego with booze and drugs over several nights, Zamani learns of the man’s first love, Thandi, as well as Abednego’s involvement in an unsolved murder. The lodger manipulates Agnes into talking, after a drunk Abednego beats her one evening, and hears of his surrogate mother’s own first love, a reverend, and of her arranged marriage to Abednego. Zamani strings his host family along by creating a fake Facebook account for Bukhosi and sending reassuring messages from the boy, all the while working to take Bukhosi’s place in the family’s home—his motivations for which are revealed late in the story. Though the tangents are sometimes overlong, Tshuma’s novel bounces through time and bursts with an epic’s worth of narratives. This is a clever, entertaining novel.

December 15, 2018
Life under Robert Mugabe's brutal government takes center stage in this harrowing novel of Zimbabwe.Seventeen-year-old Bukhosi Mlambo has been missing for more than a week, since his disappearance during a political rally. His parents, Abednego and Mama Agnes, desperate to find him, have accepted the emotional support and help of their tenant, Zamani, the unreliable narrator through whom the story is told. Zamani, an orphan, feeling a "prick of opportunity," takes advantage of their desperation and endeavors to replace Bukhosi and go from "surrogate son" to "son" through a variety of manipulative acts. As Zamani, who seems to live by the philosophy "that it's not what's true that matters, but what you can make true," unscrupulously attempts to cultivate an intimacy with the Mlambos, what results is a novel of confessions--some given freely, others pried through alcohol, drugs, and other means--family secrets, and an unflinching portrait of life in Zimbabwe before, during, and immediately after the Rhodesian Bush War. The wrath of the military commander dubbed Black Jesus, the Gukurahundi massacres--Tshuma's (Shadows, 2012) sprawling debut novel delves into these atrocities and others, and that history at times overwhelms the motivations and interiority of the central characters. Nonetheless, Tshuma delineates a rich and complicated tale about the importance of history ("Always, you must be looking back over your shoulder, to see what history is busy plotting for your future"), the price of revolution, the pursuit of freedom, and the remaking of one's self.A multilayered, twisting, and surprising whirlwind of a novel that is as impressive as it is heartbreaking.

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December 1, 2018
Even a single unreliable narrator can add layers of complexity to storytelling that might be difficult to parse. Tshuma's ambitious debut features not one but three such narrators whose smoke-and-mirrors tales leave the reader wondering where the truth really hides. But that doesn't matter, especially if, as one narrator points out: Truth is optics. This central premise lays the foundation for much of the novel, which is built on modern Zimbabwe's chaotic past. I am a man on a mission, says Zamani, a young man who is trying to ingratiate himself into his friend Bukhosi's family after Bukhosi goes missing during a rally held by the Mthwakazi Secessionist Movement. Zamani slowly shakes loose the family's story, which follows the country's fractured history. Zamani's opaque motivations distance the reader from the narrative, and sometimes the plot struggles under the weight of its hefty ambitions. But Tshuma ultimately delivers nuance and eloquent character studies, proving that an ugly history leaves no soul unscarred in its wake.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

Starred review from November 1, 2018

DEBUTIn this strong first novel for Zimbabwe-born Tshuma, narrator Zamani possesses many qualities of the classically defined unreliable narrator, particularly deception. Desperate to create a family for himself, he exploits the grief and flaws of his landlords, Abednego and Mama Agnes Mlambo. Their only son, Bukhosi, has recently gone missing from their home in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, which presents Zamani with the opportunity to assume Bukhosi's role and remake his own troubled history. Zamani pillages the couple's past to learn more of his would-be family's origins and uses their shame against them while gradually ingratiating himself into a position wherein he controls the story of Bukhosi's disappearance. As Zamani gleans details of the Mlambos' past, Tshuma chronicles the country's violent transformation from colonial Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, often translated as "house of stone" from the Shona. The graphic accounts provided by Abednego and Mama Agnes focus on the military massacres of civilians known collectively as Gukurahundi and are mercifully counterbalanced by Tshuma's poetical writing and her insertions of dark humor. VERDICT A fascinating, often disturbing metaphor for Zimbabwe's struggle to emerge from its colonial past and remember rather than erase its history; highly recommended and a solid fictional counterpart to Christina Lamb's House of Stone: The True Story of a Family Divided in War-Torn Zimbabwe. [See Prepub Alert, 7/16/18.]--Faye Chadwell, Oregon State Univ., Corvallis

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2018

DEBUTIn this strong first novel for Zimbabwe-born Tshuma, narrator Zamani possesses many qualities of the classically defined unreliable narrator, particularly deception. Desperate to create a family for himself, he exploits the grief and flaws of his landlords, Abednego and Mama Agnes Mlambo. Their only son, Bukhosi, has recently gone missing from their home in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, which presents Zamani with the opportunity to assume Bukhosi's role and remake his own troubled history. Zamani pillages the couple's past to learn more of his would-be family's origins and uses their shame against them while gradually ingratiating himself into a position wherein he controls the story of Bukhosi's disappearance. As Zamani gleans details of the Mlambos' past, Tshuma chronicles the country's violent transformation from colonial Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, often translated as "house of stone" from the Shona. The graphic accounts provided by Abednego and Mama Agnes focus on the military massacres of civilians known collectively as Gukurahundi and are mercifully counterbalanced by Tshuma's poetical writing and her insertions of dark humor. VERDICT A fascinating, often disturbing metaphor for Zimbabwe's struggle to emerge from its colonial past and remember rather than erase its history; highly recommended and a solid fictional counterpart to Christina Lamb's House of Stone: The True Story of a Family Divided in War-Torn Zimbabwe. [See Prepub Alert, 7/16/18.]--Faye Chadwell, Oregon State Univ., Corvallis

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.