cover image The Creation of Half-Broken People

The Creation of Half-Broken People

Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu. House of Anansi, $20.99 trade paper (352p) ISBN 978-1-4870-1327-1

Windham–Campbell Prize winner Ndolovu (The Theory of Flight) centers her astonishing latest on a Zimbabwean university student haunted by visions of her country’s troubled past. In the present day, the unnamed narrator interns at the prestigious Good Museum of African artifacts, run by a family foundation modeled after the legacy of Cecil Rhodes. She also happens to be dating Good family scion John Good IX. After he dies by suicide, she becomes unstable and is committed to a mental ward. The Good family agrees to host the narrator in their cramped attic, where she has visions of three women who share their stories with her. There’s Eliza, who grows up in 1930s Bulawayo prior to segregation and is taught to believe that she’s a white woman; her skin gradually turns darker as she ages, revealing her to be of mixed race. Anne, the daughter of an English executioner in what was then Victorian Rhodesia, is raped by a group of white colonists. The last of the three, headstrong Setheli, fights for the rights of native Bantu people in the early 20th century. As the narrator listens to the women’s stories and learns about her connections to them, she grapples with her own family’s history. Ndlovu sustains a vivid gothic style while providing unflinching commentary on the abuses of British colonialism. This is a revelation. (Apr.)