Farai Mudzingwa is a Zimbabwean writer whose fiction is influenced by music, our interior selves and alternate realities. He has previously published a short fiction – Green Shadows in the Kiya Kiya Republic – and short stories in Weaver Press anthologies, Kwani?, Writivism, Storymoja and Short Story Day Africa. His profiles, literature reviews and political essays have appeared in New Frame, Chimurenga Chronic, The Africa Report, New Humanitarian, TRT News, Contemporary& and Mail & Guardian.
Avenues by Train
When seven-year-old Jedza witnesses a tragic incident involving a train and the death of his close boyhood friend in his hometown Miner’s Drift, he is convinced that his life is haunted. Now in his mid-20s, Jedza is a down-and-out electrician, moving to Harare in the hopes that he will escape the darkness and superstitions of the small town. But living in the shadowy restless atmosphere of the Avenues with its mysterious pools of water rising under musasa trees, he is tormented by the disappearance of his sister and their early encounters with ancestral spirits, the shapeshifting power of the njuzu and a vengeful ngozi. To move forward, he must stop running away and confront the trauma of his past.
An eclectic, experimental novel, AVENUES BY TRAIN is a brash and confident debut by an exciting new voice
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