Harare Review of Books

151 pages.

First published in 1998.

Finished reading on 8 Sept 2018.

Genre: Fiction.

Butterfly Burning brings the brilliantly poetic voice of Zimbabwean writer Yvonne Vera to American readers for the first time. Set in Makokoba, a black township, in the late 1940s, the novel is an intensely bittersweet love story. When Fumbatha, a construction worker, meets the much younger Phephelaphi, he”wants her like the land beneath his feet from which birth had severed him.” He in turn fills her “with hope larger than memory.” But Phephelaphi is not satisfied with their “one-room” love alone. The qualities that drew Fumbatha to her, her sense of independence and freedom, end up separating them. And the closely woven fabric of township life, where everyone knows everyone else, has a mesh too tight and too intricate to allow her to escape her circumstances on her own.

Vera exploits language to peel away the skin of public and private lives. In Butterfly Burning she captures the ebullience and the bitterness of township life, as well as the strength and courage of her unforgettable heroine.

I’m one of those lucky people whose friends give them books (Forever thanks, P❤️❤️); and, honestly, if you get me a book, you have my eternal puppyesque adoration and devotion (forever).

I’d wanted to read this book forever (another one) because I had never (gasp!) read Yvonne Vera, a giant of Zimbabwean literature. I will write a whole blog post at some point about how hard it has been historically to find books by Zimbabwean authors *in Zimbabwe*, when they should be a dime a dozen at every street corner. Such a great heritage, so inaccessible. But that’s my gripe for another time.

Some of the writing in this book got a bit tiresome for me, because this is a story where you have to parse out the meaning of what’s going on. But Phephelaphi is a wonderful protagonist, and her experiences will stay with me.

Side note: my beloved friend Pepsi 💜 (Phephelaphi Dube) told me Ms Vera named Phephelaphi for her. Pepsi is no longer here, and this thought–that she’s immortalised in this way–is something immensely cheering.

I recommend that you read this with Bulawayo Burning, a book by Terence O. Ranger, which fleshes out the historical record of the time to which Ms Vera’s characters belong.

Rated: 6/10. Lyrical, but I got tired of the lyricism.