Harare Review of Books

230 pages.

First published on Apr. 26, 2022. Out in paperback on Feb. 28, 2023 (Catapult)

Fiction/Literary.

I like the quietness of this book. Sometimes you just want to immerse yourself in fragments, scenes, ideas created through words, and that’s what this book does.

It’s a novel of ideas, a bit like looking at a painting (and, not coincidentally I’m sure, the protagonist is a painter). It’s also a novel of identity, change, and loss. There isn’t a whole lot of plot, although things happen; mostly, we are immersed in the protagonist’s interiority. There’s of reflection on and processing of the race problem in the US; this is mostly seen through the frame of the protagonist’s outsiderness, his questions about and issues with his own identity. This is also a novel that considers what it’s like to change with time, losing bits of oneself (mostly the confusing parts) and yet somehow becoming more whole.

I enjoyed this, but it is a musing read, a bit like an arthouse film, and so won’t be to everyone’s taste.

Thank you to Catapult for this DRC.

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