Shards x Cynthia Rumbidzai Marangwanda

51 pages.

Published by Carnelian Heart Publishing on March 1, 2023.

Fiction/novella.

This wonderful novella follows a young woman over the course of two days in Harare, as she grapples with existential questions about her life and calling. Written from a first-person perspective, with a kind of stream-of-consciousness style, Shards immerses the reader into the life and thoughts of the twenty-three year old. Right from the beginning, I sensed the influence of Marechera:

It’s half-past failure and I’m still in bed. The date is twenty-three, same as my age. My wrists have seen better days, battle-scarred and war-wounded as they are. My arms are riddled with bullets. They stopped bleeding when I stopped feeling at the age of seventeen. That is when a father figure grabbed me by the throat and threatened the innocence out of me. His wife was not there to witness it; she was away weeping hot pious tears on her knees in a house of worship or wailing theatrically on all fours at a fellow churchgoer’s funeral. Or maybe she was too busy trying to cope with the delights of motherhood. God bless wombs and all the poison they bring forth. My sister was away at school painting her fresh-faced adolescence all over a paedophilic education system.

Marangwanda is an exceptionally gifted author, and her approach to language is beautifully poetic (no doubt partly from her work as a spoken word artist). She squeezes a tortured beauty out of her protagonist’s struggles against the brutal realities of her life. The effect is surreal; and in Shards, as in all of the best surrealistic fiction, the reader is unsettled, unmoored, even repulsed, but cannot look away.

Read Shards for the beauty of language and experience, and how Marangwanda makes you feel as her protagonist does. Also for the amazing soliloquy towards the end of the book, one of my favourite things about it. For the commentary on modern Zim life, and life on the fringes of Harare’s Arts scene (and the Avenues). Yes, in the tradition of some of the greatest Zimbabwean writers of previous decades, particularly Marechera; but Marangwanda distinguishes herself as a unique and worthy successor, who speaks in the voice of Zimbabwe’s next literary generation (and her own distinctive voice). Highly recommended; Shards won Marangwanda a National Arts Merit Award (NAMA) in 2015, and it was absolutely well-deserved.

Grateful thanks to Sam Vazhure and Carnelian for the review copy.

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