What to give the man, woman or child who has everything: Snuggie - the blanket with sleeves!

I almost died laughing at this. Someone has actually invented a blanket with sleeves, because, in the words of the manufacturer, "blankets are OK but they can slip and slide, plus your hands are trapped inside."

Oh the tyranny of the enslaving blanket!

But fear not, folks, because Snuggie™ is here! Work the remote! Use your laptop! Do some reading in total warmth and comfort! All thanks to the "super soft, thick, luxurious fleece with roomy, oversized sleeves that let you do what you want while still being totally wrapped in warmth." And if you buy one, you will get a second absolutely FREE!

This is so wonderfully looney. I am laughing fit to burst but part of me is thinking, hmmm this would be really handy on long flights:) My two Snuggies are on their way!

In which I am moved by the kindness of strangers

Sixteen days to Easterly, people, sixteen days, and the butterflies in the stomach, oh how they flutter. In the next week or so, the critics are going to weigh in on my book. I will be posting all reviews on my website as they come in. I am prepared for even the most negative review believe me, because no critic will ever be as harsh as my own internal critic, that still small voice that keeps trying to convince me that I have managed to pull quite the most spectacular con in the history of publishing!

Ahead of the reviews, we had some very nice comments from different people. Late last year, my editors put together galley or review copies to send to different writers, newspapers etc. I have been moved and humbled by the words that some of the writers that I admire the most have used about my work.  I wish in this post to express my appreciation to JM Coetzee, Yiyun Li and Owen Sheers who provided us with "blurbs" for the book. I have also been informed that one of the finest exponents of the short story, James Lasdun has written a big essay on the short story for this Saturday's Guardian Review, in which he discusses a number of writers and  compares me to, wait for it, Chekhov. Gulp.  Then there were Michela Wrong and Tim Butcher who read the book and sought me out to send messages of congratulations and encouragement.  

I am grateful indeed to the generosity of these writers, and especially to JM Coetzee whose very kind words about my story back in 2007 were as water to a parched land.  I can only hope to give back the good karma by passing it on to others. Please join me in hoping that Easterly, and later Memory, will be successful enough to make my name mean something, so that I can one day do for others what these wonderful writers have done for me. Aiwa tinovuchira, tinopa kutenda.  Zvaitwa zvaitwa zvaitwa.  

This is where I write

The Guardian has a great feature called Writers' Rooms, where they ask different writers to open up their homes and talk about where they write. So imagine  that I am a very famous writer and you are reading this in the Guardian ... 

Here we go.

This is my writer's room, or at least, it is my writer's corner. I am not fortunate enough to have a whole room to myself.  Still, I won't cavil at my fortune, I am in a better position than poor dear Jane Austen, who sometimes had to hide away her work when people came in, and certainly more fortunate than Shakespeare's sister as imagined by Virginia Woolf. I have a room of my own, even if it is only a corner in a room of my own. 

  

My desk faces the garden.  Above my desk is a black and white etching by one of my favourite artists, the Zimbabwean painter Stephen Garan'anga. I bought it directly from him at his studio in Mbare. Called "Street Reading", it is a study of a man engrossed in his book and oblivious to the people moving behind him.  Above that print is a framed cover of a now-defunct journal called The Zimbabwe Review. This particular issue features a photograph of me and a group of other students taken by an American academic called Lynette Jackson. The pic made the pages of a couple of US newspapers at the time. It was taken during the infamous mini skirt demonstration at the University of Zimbabwe in 1993.  If you missed it, a group of UZ boys stripped a woman of her skirt because they did not think she was appropriately dressed. In response, my friends Jessie Majome, Jane Mavindidze, Catherine Magoge and I organised a demonstration in which we wore short skirts and marched around the campus carrying placards and singing angry songs about our right to wear what we wanted, including short skirts.  A few stones were thrown at us, believe it or not. Wild times.

My desk is a small leather and wood affair. I am still looking for that magical antique desk in walnut that has my name all over it. In the meantime, I am very happy with this one. It is the right size for my living room, it is elegant, it is practical without being officey. On the desk is my new Imac. I lost my beloved Mac Powerbook in a recent robbery, and it has taken me time to warm to this replacement. I loved the laptop because I had dressed it up in a lovely purple tuxedo and I could write anywhere, even in bed. This one sort of imprisons me to the desk, it certainly inspires discipline if nothing else. 

  

Next to the computer is a pile of CDs that I am adding to my iTunes library. When the computer (and my Ipod) were stolen, my stored music went with them, so I am starting afresh, very slowly.  Next to the CDs is a pile of books that I am either writing about or reading. Then there is my diary, and my three notebooks, I carry different notebooks for different projects. On the desk is also an orange cloth pencil case given to me by a friend from Bhutan, a jazzy orange and black mousepad from Ordning and Reda, three mugs for pens, pencils and the capos for my guitar, but one has been appropriated by Kush for his felt pens.  The little orange figure next to the mugs is Wildmutt, one of the 10 alien alter egos of Benjamin Tennyson, also known as Ben 10. I sit on a bright orange leather chair with a purple cushion.  On the left hand of my keyboard is my Rolodex and a print-out of a story that I am working on.

Under the desk is one of my favourite pieces of furniture, a beautiful wood and metal Zanzibari bridal chest that I bought in an antique shop in Zimbabwe eight years ago.  My printer sits on it, and next to the printer is a blue Lanvin shoe box in which I keep odds and ends. My desk is very nice, but it does not have enough drawers, so I have to be creative. 

So this is where I write!

Emmanuel Sigauke on the pleasures of reading and on Harare North by Brian Chikwava

Books, I always say, are addictive things. They have mind altering effects. They can make you giddy, emotional, a little drunk. Laugh out loud, cry, dance, sing. And there is nothing like sharing that with a friend. My friend Emmanuel Sigauke and I coincidentally read Brian Chikwava's Harare North at the same time. If you are wondering why you have not seen it in the bookshops yet, well, you should know that one of the benefits of being a writer is that people send you free books before they even come out, it is a little like being an actress on Oscar night, with all the free gowns. Manu and I chatted furiously on Facebook, comparing notes to see where the other was, what the other thought. i have shared with you some of my first reactions, well, here is Manu, in a post from his blog Wealth of Ideas, and reproduced here with his kind permission. 

 

_____________

As I process the review of Harare Noth by Brian Chikwava, which I plan to post or publish somewhere (anywhere), let me share my excitement (again) about this book and the direction Zimbabwean literature is taking.  

Harare North is one of a few soon-to-be released (April 2) books I throw in the trunk of my car when I visit friends,fellow Zimbabweans or other Africans especially, because at such gatherings there is always one person who will remember that either I write or I talk about books often. I end up running to my car to fetch a book to share something about it with the person. The last time this happened I was with a small group of close friends from Zimbabwe, so I had the chance to read a few paragraphs from Harare North. I always feel that sharing information about such new publications I may influence the target audience of Zimbabweans, especially those in the Diaspora, to order copies for themselves (I don't see myself lending my heavily annotated copy to anyone). 

I call Zimbabweans a primary audience for Harare North because there are things they will understand as they read this book that no other readers will get right away. The cultural ideosyncracies in the novel are quite a treat, a rich source of great humor. So I read the few paragraphs. I acted the parts, encouraged by my audience's laughter. Because one of the people in the audience had just returned from Zimbabwe, the dialogue ended up being about how I should have been at the border of South Africa and Zimbabwe in February/early March to witness the experiences fellow Zimbabweans go through daily. If I had been there, she said, I would have written a novel. I said, don't worry, another Zimbabwean writer, Christopher Mlalazi, has already written a novel, Many Rivers, to be released in May by Lion Press Ltd (UK. He does a good job of portraying the struggles of Zimbabweans in South Africa as they cross endless rivers for opportunities.  

So then I read another paragraph, and everyone was impressed by the fact that although the book was written in English,it manages to read like a Shona or Ndebele book in parts. Is the writer a bad writer? Is that his English? Did he self-publish?  The writer knows English, I explained. He won a Caine Prize for one of his short stories in English, and it is the title story of Seventh Street Alchemy, a collection of prize-winning short stories. It is available on Amazon. And, yes, if you know Shona or Ndebele, you can have direct access to the mind of the narrator, and you may laugh, often at him (because we laugh at each other's English). As to the writer being a bad one, oh no, far from it. So then why? Who would publish such a book where the narrator speaks in Shonglish? This one was done by Random House (through Jonathan Cape). You are kidding, right? Actually, no. Look here.... I read another sentence, the one in which the narrator sees newspaper headlines featuring Mugabe on the front cover and he insists, there in London, on calling him His Excellency:"The paper say Zimbabwe has run out toilet paper. That make me imagine how many times of bum wiping with the ruthless and patriotic Herald newspaper, everyone's troubled buttock holes get vex and now turn into likkle red knots."   

There is really something wrong with this Shonglish-speaking narrator, someone in the room says. You got that right:there is really something wrong with the mind of Harare North's narrator. You can call him schizo, psychotic, DID, multi-personality, alter-ego.... Really? Yes, call him Anything-goes and expect anything from him, even his unique use of language, some stuff we as Zimbabweans may not even recognize. So this writer is like Marechera then? Well, he has been labeled as such, but when the world reads this novel, minds may change; he may finally attain his own position in Zimbabwean literature as himself. You are kidding, right? No; perhaps now it's time we move beyond Marechera. That man was something else though, wasn't he? Oh yes, he was, and still is. You know about the conference at Oxford University in May? Soon we are eating sadza and the tough chicken that can only be found at the Chinese Supermarket, the one we have eaten for over ten years because it tastes like home. Harare North now sits content on a coffee table, not quite forgotten yet. I will bring it back on the next visit.  

I want Zimbaweans to get in the culture of reading for pleasure. I want to go to African book signings and greet many African readers there. Zimbabwean writers are producing high-quality literature which needs to find Zimbabwean readers ready. There is just a lot in these books that we can't afford to miss, to understand what the Zimbabwean situation was and is really about. Of course, we know what it is about, but when you read it in a short story, or a novel, there is a way of looking at it that you may not have thought about, or seen. And what's refreshing is that what you will see in the good stories is art just being art, pleasing you.  

One of the listeners at another gathering, an African accountant, once told me that the problem with African literature is that it is too political, that it covers in Zimbabwe what already happened in Nigeria, or Angola, so there is nothing new to expect in the African novel. Minus the politics, it's not literature.  Not anymore.  The new names cropping up are taking the literature to new heights; and this literature is gripping the attention of readers everywhere. We are expanding to all kinds of genres, challenging you, entertaining you, and, ultimately, giving you a moment to escape in the worlds we have represented. And even if it were political, remember it is not going to be political in the way a newspaper report will be; it will show you why it cannot help but be political, if it insists on being political. Sometimes, a story just has to be.... 

As I was saying, the narrator of Harare North introduces a new chapter in African literature

In which I write the opening chapter of Dan Brown's "The Solomon Key"

Oh dear. The Vatican is presenting me with an impossible choice: I may have to choose between supporting the Pope and supporting Dan Brown, the writer of the clunkiest sentences since Gutenberg invented the printing press.

The Pope is considering calling on the faithful to boycott Angels and Demons, the Tom Hanks vehicle based on the most implausible thriller to take up valuable space in a bookshop. I have read with mounting incredulity all, and I mean all of Dan Brown's thrillers. The books are soooo badly written, but goodness, the plots are compelling. I have read each thriller in one sitting. But I must say that either Dan Brown's editor is the most workshy person in the world, or, if those books were edited at all, Dan Brown's original manuscripts must have been horrific to behold. What delights and amuses me the most about his style is that he begins each book with a dying man who is not only supplied a name, but also a job title, this is what a critic has called Dan Brown's addiction to the anarthrous occupational nominal premodifier.

And so we have: Renowned curator Jacques Sauniere staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum's Grand Gallery ... Physicist Leonardo Vetra smelled burning flesh and knew that it was his own ... Geologist Charles Brophy had endured the savage splendour of this terrain for years, and yet nothing could prepare him for a fate as barbarous and unnatural as the one about to befall him...

!!!

I also love the way Brown interrupts the flow of the story to casually throw in little facts about stuff. The Suretè is the French civil police force. The Seine is a river that flows through Paris. Paris is the capital of France. From an aeroplane at night, the lights of Paris look like bright and twinkly lights. Da Vinci's first name was Leonardo. I am teasing him, but you get the drift.

I hear his new novel, the long-anticipated The Solomon Key, is set in Washington DC, and deals with the Freemasons and Masonic symbols. To assist Dan Brown in his creative process, here, from the pen of lawyer and writer Petina Gappah, is a possible opening.

___________________


World Bank Assistant Media Relations Officer (Africa Department) Julie Mugamba knew that she was dying. She knew this because with what remained of her two bleeding eyes, she could see several of her body parts scattered all over the room. Her left hand, fresh from a recent manicure at the new Korean place in Foggy Bottom that had been recommended by her best friend IMF Deputy Legal Counsel (Derivatives) Millicent Bassington-Frobisher, was still attached to the black office-issue telephone on her World Bank desk. Her right leg, the foot still encased in the delicate leather of her favourite Christian Louboutin peep-toe sling-back, had been flung carelessly and landed next to the small potted banana tree that she had brought with her from her last home leave to her native country, Uganda, pronounced juːˈɡɑːndə, a small African land-locked country in East Africa bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of Congo which is oxymoronically named because it is not all that democratic, on the southwest by Rwanda and on the south by Tanzania, the home of Mount Kilimanjaro, an inactive stratovolcano that is the highest peak in Africa and that was not, contrary to popular legend, given away as a birthday present by Queen Victoria of England to her cousin the German Kaiser.

As Assistant Media Relations Officer (Africa Department) Julie Mugamba looked at her leg, she noticed with pleasure that the distinctive red sole that is the Louboutin trademark still looked pristine. Christian Louboutin, she recalled, was born in 1963 in Paris to a family of four sisters and a father who was a skilled carpenter, had left school at the age of 12, and had been fascinated by the shoes worn by showgirls who danced in Paris nightclubs. The pleasure Julie Mugamba felt in admiring her shoe soon turned to mounting horror as she realised that the dark bright red of the soles was due not only to the mastery of the French cobbler but also to the blood dripping down from the zig-zag shaped wound of her sawn-off leg.

Then, into her line of vision came the Assasin.

The Assassin looked at the Assistant Media Relations Officer (Africa Department). The Assistant Media Relations Officer (Africa Department) looked at the Assassin.

The Assasin smiled darkly. His eyes were like cold steel.

He was enjoying this.

He had killed in the past, he was killing in the present, and he would kill in the future.

He came from a long line of Assasins: not the Hassasins of lore, members of a murderous Arab sect known for its brutal murders of Catholics and for celebrating each kill with hashish-fueled frenzies and who eventually became known by the name assasins, but a family from a small farming community in North Dakota known as the Assasins of Assasin Farm. His father, James Jake Assasin, had been the son of John Joseph Assasin, who had been the son of Jeremiah Joshua Assasin who had been the son of Old Jedediah Jacob Assasin.

Now, as Justin Julian Assasin paced the blood-splattered shining fake marble floor of Julie Mugamba's office that was on the fourth floor, two doors away from the lift and five feet away from a bathroom with a blocked toilet that had not been fixed for two days, he wondered not only which names beginning with J he would give to his own as yet unborn son, but also just how much more sawing he would have to do before the Assistant Media Relations Officer (Africa Department) revealed the location of the object he was seeking.

The object had been hidden through the ages, its mysterious power calling to believers who sought it, to cynics who denied it, to the Masons who had dedicated their lives to protecting its secret location. It had left a trail of blood through history, from the blood splattered across ancient caves at Olduvai Gorge, the birthplace of man, to the trails of the Inca warriors. It had brought added venom to the battles of the Goths and Visigoths. In its name, crusades had been fought and lost. Unknown to historians, it was the reason for the fall of Genghis Khan and Adolf Hitler. It was the final link that would dismantle the cold steel grip of imperialism.


Men had died seeking it. More men had died protecting it, and now, they were about to be joined by World Bank Assistant Media Relations Officer (Africa Department) Julie Mugamba.

The Assasin caressed the cold steel blade of his Black and Decker saw.

As he cast a coldly steely glance in the direction of Julie Mugamba's head, he decided to give her one final chance.

"The key," he growled threateningly. "Where is the key?"

His voice was gravelly but not that deep; it was the voice of the teenage Anakin Skywalker at the moment of breaking, seconds before it became the voice of Darth Vader who was voiced by renowned African-American actor James Earl Jones but when unmasked was revealed to be some old white dude.

Julie Mugamba struggled to speak. Her mouth full of blood, she said, "The key is ... in the..."

She paused.

"The key," the Assasin menaced menacingly.

"The door," Julie Mugamba said wearily.

"The key," the Assasin said ominously.

"The key is in the ..." sighed Julie Mugamba helplessly.

"The key," the Assasin said intimidatingly.

"The key is in the door!" shouted Julie Mugamba hysterically.

Assistant Media Relations Officer (Africa Department) Julie Mugamba gave one last desperate, longing, wish-filled look at the Assasin and died.

Justin Julian Assasin moved like a cat on a cold steel roof until he reached the door of the World Bank office. His hands, cold as steel, closed on the cold steel of the key-shaped key and he smiled a cold steely smile with just a delicate smidgeon of exultation.

"The key!" he thought darkly. "The Solomon Key!"

Now, all that remained to do was to find Robert Langdon, the Harvard Professor of Religious Iconology and Symbology who looked like Harrison Ford in tweed in real life but was played by Tom Hanks in the movies.

To find and kill Robert Langdon.

He smiled.


Darkly.

____________

Feel free to use as much of this as you wish, Mr. Brown. I won't sue you for plagiarism, I promise:)

In which I take leave as I go on a brief hiatus

I spent most of the weekend on the phone, talking about the shocking accident which claimed the life of Susan Tsvangirai, and in which her husband and Zim premier Morgan was injured. My sympathies and thoughts are with Edwin, Garikai, Vimbai, Rumbi, Vincent and Millicent Tsvangirai and all their family. It is a terrible thing to lose your mother, it is just horrible to have such an event revealed to you as the latest "breaking news story" on television.

I found deeply distasteful the intrusion of Mugabe, Joice Mujuru, Happyton Bonyongwe and the others who wept crocodile tears over Morgan's hospital bed. They could have allowed him to grieve in private, and not brought the cameras to witness their insincerities. There is speculation in Zimbabwe that this was not an accident. I believe that this may have been just an unfortunate accident, but there is certainly a basis for suspicion, as the party of Robert Mugabe always boasts, Zanu ndeyeropa, it is a party of blood. The party will not hesitate to spill blood, and has done so in the past. So while this may have been an accident, it is certainly one that will forever be regarded as suspicious.

The books give away was a great success, thanks to all who participated. All books should reach the recipients in the next two weeks. In the meantime, I am taking a brief hiatus from this blog. I will be back at the end of March. Until then, thanks for reading and thanks for your support.

A World Book Day Books Give Away

To celebrate World Book Day, and the short story, I am giving away the following short story collections:

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin;

Unaccustomed Earth by Jumpha Lahiri;

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers by Yiyun Li;

The First Person and Other Stories by Ali Smith; and

No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July.

Yiyun, Miranda, and Jumpha's collections have won the Frank O'Connor short story award, and I am pretty certain that Ali and Daniyal's collections will be shortlisted this year.

These are all new books, by the way. This offer is limited to one book per person on a first come first served basis.

Drop me a line in the comments box indicating which book you wish to receive. In the meantime, amuse yourself with this story in the Guardian – it is about the books that people in teh United Kingdom claim to have read, when they have actually not. Hee hee.

Page 25 of the Payot New Books Catalogue ...

Every year, I pick up at least one of the free catalogues that Payot, Switzerland's biggest book chain, publishes to promote new books.  I was in the Payot on Chantepoulet earlier this afternoon on my way to Manor and I picked up a catalogue. I was browsing through it when my heart stopped ... There, on page 25, in the corner at the bottom of the page, under the new books from  Julia Franck, James Frey, Damon Galgut and Steven Galloway  ...  is Easterly! Woo-hoo!