A stunning memoir that transforms our understanding of a generation born at a key turning point in world history
‘Very moving, very powerful . . . an extraordinarily interesting life’ AMOL RAJAN
'A rough Zimbabwean equivalent of Jung Chang's Wild Swans' Financial Times
'Beautifully written . . . a truly compelling read' Spectator
Intimate and epic' SATHNAM SANGHERA
In my home country, they call me a ‘bornfree’.
Simukai Chigudu was one of the first generation to be born after the end of colonial rule in Zimbabwe. Growing up he heard stories about his grandfather’s murder by the Rhodesian regime, how his father had been imprisoned and tortured as a student before joining the war of independence, and how his mother had thrown off the strictures of the past to build a successful career helping other women do the same. Yet Simukai’s early life was also steeped in British tradition. With his classmates he sang English folk songs, read Shakespeare, played cricket.
Then, in 2002, he was one of thousands to leave the country as it descended into political violence and economic collapse. His new home: a boarding school in the north of England. What followed was a culture shock that unravelled his understanding of the world, his family and himself.
Chasing Freedom is his profound and remarkably moving story – that of a boy shaped through his parents’ buried trauma by the great currents of late-twentieth century history. It is the story of a family haunted by the cause of liberation, and of a new generation, still searching for their promised freedom.
'Left me breathless with the shock of recognition . . . like all great memoirs, it is somewhat uncategorisable . . . devastating . . . definitive . . . full of arresting and poignant reflections, potent and often funny' NESRINE MALIK, Guardian
‘A work of real power and beauty as well as disarming truthfulness’ AMIA SRINIVASAN, author of The Right to Sex
‘Utterly captivating . . . told with such clarity and precision that I forgot I was reading’ DINA NAYERI, author of The Ungrateful Refugee
‘Will teach you more about the legacies of colonialism than a hundred op-eds or a dozen textbooks’ SATHNAM SANGHERA, author of Empireland
‘Simukai Chigudu writes compellingly, lucidly and beautifully . . . an eye-opener’ ZEINAB BADAWI, author of An African History of Africa
Simukai Chigudu is associate professor of African politics at the University of Oxford and fellow of St. Antony’s College. He was previously a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. He is one of the founding members of Rhodes Must Fall in Oxford, a campaign to decolonize the university – and remove the statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College.
