“Chinodya reverses the traditional relationship between family and nation, concentrating on the social energies in an African family, rather than the individual or the nation. The novelist’s psychological sensitivity illuminates the dominant themes of disease and death; and the constant tension between the pull of the past and the aspiration of modernity is expressed in a prose that makes everything original and new, recasting old themes,” reads the citation.
Chinodya is one of Zimbabwe’s most celebrated post-independence literary writers. He won The Commonwealth Writers Prize, Africa region in 1990, for his critically acclaimed novel, Harvest of Thorns and has published eight novels, children’s books, educational texts, radio and film scripts, and has contributed to numerous anthologies.
107 titles, from 66 African publishers, in 12 countries, in 5 languages, were submitted for the 2007 Noma competition.
Strife explores the powerful draw that conflicting ideologies exercise over an emerging middle-class that at once yearns for autonomy and unconsciously desires the irresponsibility of an all-pervading destiny.
Post published in: Arts