We are all Zimbabweans now - Tapa blanda

In 1982 a young American historian arrives in Zimbabwe filled with idealism and enthusiasm for the benevolent new Prime Minister Robert Mugabe and the postcolonial new beginning for that country. His historic research leads him to an apparent murder case, unresolved since the days of the bush war. As he draws – or is lead – or yet mislead – closer to an answer, he becomes involved with a local woman through whom he soon finds himself in the inner circle of the new ruling class. Once the euphoria starts dissipating he encounters increasingly menacing instances of corruption and repression, including threats to himself to abandon his investigation. With every new revelation a new layer of decay is exposed and with that, his idealism retreats. In the process, the meaning of the novel’s title, taken from Mugabe’s conciliatory rhetoric at the beginning, gradually comes to mean: we are all trapped and compromised into the moral tangle and the destruction into which all the promise has degenerated. An extremely accomplished and compelling novel that deftly employs the instruments of a detective thriller.

This is a compelling detective novel uncovering layers of idealism down to the disintegrated core of a once promising African new beginning. In 1981 a young American historian arrives in Zimbabwe filled with idealism and enthusiasm for the benevolent new Prime Minister Robert Mugabe and the postcolonial new beginning for that country. His historic research leads him to an apparent murder case, unresolved since the days of the bush war. As he draws - or is lead - or yet mislead - closer to an answer, he becomes involved with a local woman through whom he soon finds himself in the inner circle of the new ruling class. Once the euphoria starts dissipating he encounters increasingly menacing instances of corruption and repression, including threats to himself to abandon his investigation. With every new revelation a new layer of decay is exposed and with that, his idealism retreats. In the process, the meaning of the novel's title, taken from Mugabe's conciliatory rhetoric at the beginning, gradually comes to mean: we are all trapped and compromised into the moral tangle and the destruction into which all the promise has degenerated. This is an extremely accomplished and compelling novel that deftly employs the instruments of a detective thriller.