Finding a Way Home

The stories in Finding a Way Home tackle many of the experiences of Zimbabwean people, but mostly life in the last few decades: i.e. life during the fight for democracy in Zimbabwe. It also tackles rape and sexual abuse issues, an insight into diseases that are not usually talked about well in Africa, yet they are devastating the continent like AIDS, Malaria, TB; diseases like bipolar, hypertension, cancer. It tackles failure of religious and spiritual beliefs. It delves into early adult coming-of-age stories, love stories in a world in the shadow of the AIDS pandemic, our dire need as humans to want to connect our lives with someone else, especially now in the 21st century and how mostly it is ending in break-ups of relationships and disillusionment. The stories are free of most of the conventions of storytelling. Some stories are like notes, of different people connected to this idea of Finding a way home, talking ... telling their own stories, in their own way. The storyteller also explore storytelling techniques; in having the characters in the stories stamp their own emotions on the page. It is very experimental, challenging and incisive, the stories have the ability to look a subject straight in eyes, without flinching. It is sometimes a fractured narrative with phrases disappearing off the edges, and yet the collection also balances between the exhibit of preciseness use of language and a deeper observation of human behaviour at close range through observing it all like a camera. Tendai Rinos Mwanaka is a Zimbabwean publisher and owner of Mwanaka Media and Publishing, an editor, mentor, thinker, literary artist, visual artist and musical artist with 25 individual books and at least 25 curated and edited anthologies published in Zimbabwe, Cameroon, Northern Ireland, UK, and USA, 2 music albums released and several dozens of songs; hundreds of paintings, drawings, literary pieces and other artworks curated, produced, exhibited and published in over 400 journals in at least 35 countries worldwide. His work has been translated into over 11 languages. His first chapbook of poetry, Disobedience Poems, is published in the UK.