This book was a birthday gift. I’d never heard of the title before I received it, nor of the Zimbabwean author. I finished the book a few days ago, and have been thinking of it ever since.

One point to make right at the start is that I almost put the book down when I read the prologue, and realised that one of the story’s foundation stones is the shooting down of a passenger plane.

However … I read on, and I was fascinated. The writing is beautiful.

At the heart of the story is Genie – beautiful and defiant, and profoundly giving. She knows love and gentleness, and always holds true to those, despite the dislocation, disloyalty, and disease that follow her into adulthood. It is her life that links together the many other characters in the book who surround her, some intersecting with her only briefly or indirectly but each of them adding their own flawed humanity to the context through which Genie evolves.

That, for me, is the chewy soul of this book – the way it gives villains and heroes alike, lives and hopes and dreams. No person is right or wrong, regardless of whether they are navigating or inflicting trauma. They are simply revealed, their day to day sharply focused, but their roles smudged around the edges with magic realism. There is real trauma, but it is blurred in a way that spares the reader.

The impression I’ve been left with is of a book that is gentle, but also devastatingly powerful. I loved the writing, and would rate it as one of the most striking novels I’ve read by a Zimbabwean author.

(The copy I have is published by Catalyst Press. The novel was originally published by Penguin Books in South Africa in 2018. It won the Barry Ronge Prize for Debut Fiction in South Africa.)

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023