Junctions - Daniel Mandishona

Junctions is Daniel Mandishona’s second collection of short stories, following White Gods Black Demons (Weaver Press, 2009).

Again, he quarries the richness and variety of Zimbabwean lives to deliver characters and narratives spanning the social spectrum: political ambition and violence; beggars on city streets; family disputes at funerals; rural journies peppered with mishaps; corrupt policemen and born-again prophets; bus accidents, and township tailors. But if his subjects reflect grim realities, Mandishona’s treatment of his characters is achieved with a wonderful sardonic irony, capacious enough to give even the worst offenders a large humanity.

The book concludes with Edmore Chidzonga, an unemployed graduate, reflecting on the new dispensation promised by the 2017 change of national leadership:

He remembered how his late grandfather often told him that tsuro haipone rutsva kaviri; a hare can only escape a bush fire once. He had spent six years protesting. … For the first time, he felt he had no future.

Praise for White Gods Black Demons:

‘Each portrait is the product of prodigious observation and research. … Healthy doses of candour give breadth and wisdom to what is a collection of comic tragedy told with tenderness.’ Bella Matambanadzo.

‘These stories – at times pithy and acerbic, ironic and humorous – cut right across the troubled human landscape of Zimbabwe today. … A formidable new talent on the literary scene.’ Charles Mungoshi.