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Pulsing with wit, seduction, and dark humor, House of Stone is a masterful debut that explores the creative -- and often destructive -- act of history-making.In the chronic turmoil of modern Zimbabwe, Abednego and Agnes Mlambo's teenage son, Bukhosi, has gone missing, and the Mlambos fear the worst. Their enigmatic lodger, Zamani, seems to be their last, best hope for finding him. Since Bukhosi's disappearance, Zamani has been preternaturally helpful: hanging missing posters in downtown Bulawayo, handing out fliers to passersby, and joining in family prayer vigils with the flamboyant Reverend Pastor from Agnes's Blessed Anointings church. It's almost like Zamani is part of the family ... But almost isn't nearly enough for Zamani. He ingratiates himself with Agnes and feeds alcoholic Abednego's addiction, desperate to extract their life stories and steep himself in borrowed family history, as keenly aware as any colonialist or power-mad despot that the one who controls the narrative inherits the future. As Abednego wrestles with the ghosts of his past and Agnes seeks solace in a deep-rooted love, their histories converge and each must confront the past to find their place in a new Zimbabwe.Pulsing with wit, seduction, and dark humor, House of Stone is a sweeping epic that spans the fall of Rhodesia through Zimbabwe's turbulent beginnings, exploring the persistence of the oppressed in a young nation seeking an identity, but built on forgetting.



About the Author

Novuyo Rosa Tshuma

Novuyo Rosa Tshuma (born 28 January 1988) is a Zimbabwean writer. She is best known for her 2013 debut collection titled Shadows, a novella and short story book. Tshuma was born and grew up in Bulawayo, a major city in Zimbabwe. She completed her high-school education at Girls' College, Bulawayo; where she studied Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and French for her A Levels. She is an alumna of the University of Witwatersrand, where she studied Economics and Finance. In 2009, her short story You in Paradise won the Intwasa Short Story Competition (now Yvonne Vera Award) for short fiction before she shot to recognition in 2013 following the release of her collection Shadows, which was published by Kwela Books. Shadows was nominated at the 2014 Etisalat Prize for Literature and also won the Herman Charles Bosman Prize. In 2014, Tshuma was enlisted as part of Africa39, a collaborative project by Hay Festival and Rainbow Book Club, which recognises top writers from Africa under the age of 40. A one-time Magtag Fellow at the MFA Creative Writing Programme at the University of Iowa, Tshuma is presently pursuing her PhD at the University of Houston's Literature & Creative Writing Programme



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