Enter Tendai Huchu, Author of "The Hairdresser of Harare"

The next priority on my shelf, "The Hairdresser of Harare" by Tendai Huchu.

I am excited. Just received my signed copy of Tendai Huchu's The Hairdresser of Harare, a novel published by Weaver Press, Zimbabwe. Many thanks to Tendai for this wonderful gift on a Thursday evening, a great distraction indeed.

I have started reading the book, and I like the voice. What I am beginning to enjoy about stories set in Zimbabwe is how over and over again they reach that nostalgic nerve in me, how the mention of something as ordinary as Harare Gardens, the Avenues, or the throwing in of an occasional Shona or Ndebele phrase, can lead whirlpool of memories. It is perhaps a search for some type of Zimbabwean authenticity in the prose (that you can find easily), but it is undoubtedly something that feeds into the rusty homesickness (that's what homesickness becomes when you have been away for too long). For instance, as I read Huchu's novel, I am enjoying, first off, that it has Harare on the title (quite true even if this had been Gweru, Bulawayo, Zvishavane), the visibility of familiar territory in a fictional world. Then certain forms of familiarity come from the particularity of the language use, words or sentences I haven't used in years, for instance, when the narrator says, things like, "You'd have to be a nincompoop to miss it" [the salon]. You read that and say something like, "We used to say this all the time."

I have the same response reading Harare North by Brian Chikwava, Somewhere in this Country by Memory Chirere, Dancing with Life by Christopher Mlalazi, An Elegy for Easterly by Petina Gappah, and many others. This is why I think Zimbabwean in the Diaspora should rush to buy these new books; there is a way they "make sense" immediately, a way in which they whisper to you, and the most amazing thing is they whisper to you (the Zimbabwean reader) and go on to talk (often loudly) to readers elsewhere. They immediately turn you into an expert, an informed reader--how you nod in agreement and you want to explain something--anything--to a stranger.



Brian Chikwava's blurb on The Hairdresser of Harare reads, "...a subtle and refreshing story of life in contemporary Harare...a novel of morality, prejudice and ambition told with humour and tragedy." Refreshing, yes, because as I started reading it, I turn the coffee brewer on, but I have since forgotten about the coffee (although I just now remembered). The humour had immediate appeal and even in chapter one (especially in chapter one) I already see traces of tragedy in simple pronouncements as these:

"There is one secret to being a successful hairdresser...'Your client should leave the salon feeling like a white woman'. Not Coloured, Not Indian, not Chinese."

Story beginnings are promises, and as the first chapter ends, the narrator, someone with dreams and ambitions, says, "Suddenly we had a vacancy. Little did I know that this little twist of fate would cost me my crown." So now I want to know how this happened. And the why of it all.

This is an important weekend to have received Huchu's novel. Christopher Mlalazi is visiting Sacramento for his appearance with Ron Slate at Sacramento Poetry Center on Monday, October 11. I know he is bringing with him several Zimbabwean titles for book signings at Cosumnes River College (daytime Monday) and at SPC (in the evining). The Monday event is significant in that it will be the first when we will have a table full of Zimbabwean titles. In many ways, this is important.