Though audaciously told, this portrait of a young woman’s twisty journey from Zimbabwe to Brighton doesn’t quite hang together
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n the opening chapters of Zimbabwean author Brian Chikwava’s follow-up to his 2009 debut Harare North, the eponymous teen protagonist is given a pendant by an elder of the family, the irrepressible Babamukuru Jimson.
“A stone carving of Nyami Nyami, the River God, the spirit snake. My first instinct was fear that one day I would break it. It looked fragile, a needle of stone with Nyami Nyami’s serpentine body coiled up and gathered at the top, where instead of a snake’s head, a fierce fish’s head sprung out bearing sharp teeth. It was surprisingly heavy. I wore it straight away. A snake with a fish’s head. It was a strange form, as if all life forms were connected and fluid in their existence. No one had ever given me anything like this before.”
It’s telling that Chikwava’s usually peppy narration slows to scrutinise this keepsake. The pendant is an emblem of Shamiso’s twisty, mixed path from girlhood to womanhood, a path reminiscent in places of both NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names and Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions. This curious talisman represents, too, her contrarian nature. “Why can’t you be like other girls?” Shamiso’s father shouts, after she’s been insubordinate at school. It’s a question the novel attempts to tackle throughout.
