LONDON UK-based Zimbabwean author, Masimba Musodza, has ushered in a new era in his nations literature by publishing the definitive first science-fiction/horror novel in ChiShona and the first in that language to be available on amazon Kindle. MunaHacha Maive Nei weaves issues of greed and corruption, sustainable develoement, international corporate intrigue and concerns around bio-technology. Chemicals from a research station conducting illegal experiments begin to seep in to the local ecosystem, causing mutations in the flora and fauna. When a child is attacked by a giant fish, the villagers think it is a mermaid-traditional custodian of the ecology y- and seek to appease it according to the prescription of folk-lore. However, the reality of what is happening soon becomes evident, a reality more terrifying than any legend or belief.
MunaHacha Maive Nei was written for the next generation of Shona readers, taking a language that has long contended with encroaching westernisation into the modern world of information technology and new media. Musodza demonstrates a remarkable flair for his language and overturns the notion that it is not possible to write “complicated stuff” in a language that is often shunned by the educated back home.
He has been an advocate for the sustained use of African languages and it is his hope that MunaHacha Maive Nei will generate more than academic interest. The print edition will be published shortly by Coventry-based Lion Press Ltd.
A screenwriter by profession, he published his first book in 1997, The Man who turned into a Rastafarian. He is perhaps best known in literary circles for his Dread Eye Detective Agency series.