★ 11/01/2018 DEBUT In this strong first novel for Zimbabwe-born Tshuma, narrator Zamani possesses many qualities of the classically defined unreliable narrator, particularly deception. Desperate to create a family for himself, he exploits the grief and flaws of his landlords, Abednego and Mama Agnes Mlambo. Their only son, Bukhosi, has recently gone missing from their home in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, which presents Zamani with the opportunity to assume Bukhosi's role and remake his own troubled history. Zamani pillages the couple's past to learn more of his would-be family's origins and uses their shame against them while gradually ingratiating himself into a position wherein he controls the story of Bukhosi's disappearance. As Zamani gleans details of the Mlambos' past, Tshuma chronicles the country's violent transformation from colonial Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, often translated as "house of stone" from the Shona. The graphic accounts provided by Abednego and Mama Agnes focus on the military massacres of civilians known collectively as Gukurahundi and are mercifully counterbalanced by Tshuma's poetical writing and her insertions of dark humor. VERDICT A fascinating, often disturbing metaphor for Zimbabwe's struggle to emerge from its colonial past and remember rather than erase its history; highly recommended and a solid fictional counterpart to Christina Lamb's House of Stone: The True Story of a Family Divided in War-Torn Zimbabwe . [See Prepub Alert, 7/16/18.]—Faye Chadwell, Oregon State Univ., Corvallis
…[a] remarkable first novel…Tshuma's brilliant layering of competing images and metaphors is one of the many marvels of this wise and demanding novel…Zamani's radical retelling of the past is a sublime performance of narrative possibilitiespresented with an excess of love and violence that at times is almost too much to bear…Through Zamani, Tshuma shows us how much work it takes to efface the past, and, through House of Stone, she proves that those efforts are no match for a novel as ambitious and ingenious as this one.
The New York Times Book Review - Dinaw Mengestu
10/29/2018 Set in 2007 Zimbabwe, Tshuma’s darkly humorous debut follows Zamani, a 20-something lodger who decides to integrate himself into the lives of his landlords after their teenage son, Bukhosi, vanishes while accompanying Zamani to an anti-Mugabe political rally. As parents Abednego and Agnes search for the teen and emotionally tailspin, Zamani begins calling the duo his surrogate parents and listens to their histories. After plying recovering alcoholic Abednego with booze and drugs over several nights, Zamani learns of the man’s first love, Thandi, as well as Abednego’s involvement in an unsolved murder. The lodger manipulates Agnes into talking, after a drunk Abednego beats her one evening, and hears of his surrogate mother’s own first love, a reverend, and of her arranged marriage to Abednego. Zamani strings his host family along by creating a fake Facebook account for Bukhosi and sending reassuring messages from the boy, all the while working to take Bukhosi’s place in the family’s home—his motivations for which are revealed late in the story. Though the tangents are sometimes overlong, Tshuma’s novel bounces through time and bursts with an epic’s worth of narratives. This is a clever, entertaining novel. (Jan.)
"With luminous language, Novuyo Rosa Tshuma explores the treacherous terrain of colonization and decolonization, remembering and forgetting, and love and betrayal. The result is a gripping account of revolution and its aftermath, both for a country and for one man."
"Tshuma’s brilliant layering of competing images and metaphors is one of the many marvels of this wise and demanding novel. . . . It’s a remarkable feat. . . . Tshuma shows us how much work it takes to efface the past, and, through House of Stone , she proves that those efforts are no match for a novel as ambitious and ingenious as this one."
"To call [House of Stone ] clever or ambitious is to do it a disservice—it is both, but also more than that…Tshuma is incapable of writing a boring sentence…By the end, she has managed to not only sum up Zimbabwean history, but also all of African colonial history: from devastating colonialism to the bitter wars of independence to the euphoria of self-rule and the disillusionment of the present. It is an extraordinary achievement for a first novel."
"Novuyo Tshuma is pure fire."
"Tshuma's writing is smart, original, feisty, brutal and gorgeous. She hits the perfect note on every single page in this gripping novel about history, belonging and power. This is the work of an incredible, incredible talent."
"House of Stone is a novel of such maturity, such linguistic agility and scope that you’ll scarcely believe it’s a debut. Tshuma has set her formidable talents to no less a subject than the emergence of Zimbabwe from the darkness and tumult of colonialism. It’s fierce and energetic right to the end, and whip smart to boot."
"Novuyo Rosa Tshuma has written a towering and multilayered gem. House of Stone is one of the greatest-ever novels about Zimbabwe. What a timely, resonant gift."
"Be prepared to laugh, shed tears, and marvel."
"Novuyo Rosa Tshuma’s epic satire House of Stone (2018) is driven by one Zamani’s almost pathological desire to replace the missing son of the Mlambo family. In Tshuma’s beautiful interweaving of personal and national history, we learn of successive generations burdened by sins of their fathers."
Guardian - Panashe Chigumadzi
"Tshuma’s House of Stone is a devastating and inviting piece of fiction that is earning its raves as a beyond notable first novel.… Her book slips like sand through fingers through time and voice, masterfully condensing the history of Zimbabwe to the point where the back story is informative and provocative but not cumbersome.… Tshuma deftly tells a story of colonization and decolonization both with a wide focus on the nation and the tight focus on a few people. The latter serves as a tragic microcosm of the former.… Her balance between the tightest and broadest focus is admirable and efficient."
Houston Chronicle - Andrew Dansby
"An enthralling novel that has it all: pathos, humour, and an insightful engagement with the history of Zimbabwe. With audacious style, Tshuma manages to step over the pitfalls that would swallow a lesser talent, and in so doing announces herself as a huge talent."
"Reading House of Stone is like being punched in the stomach and tickled at the same time."
"House of Stone is the novel devastated Zimbabwe needed to have written. Now Novuyo Tshuma has written it. Bayethe to her scintillating talent! In the most original and fearless prose I’ve read in years, Tshuma’s scheming narrator, Zamani, reveals the personal and political disintegration that was Zimbabwe’s undoing."
"House of Stone is that rare thing, a truly original work of art whose author’s risk-taking pays off on the page. Zamani is a complex, compelling, and ambiguous narrator. Utterly stunning."
2018-11-26
Life under Robert Mugabe's brutal government takes center stage in this harrowing novel of Zimbabwe.
Seventeen-year-old Bukhosi Mlambo has been missing for more than a week, since his disappearance during a political rally. His parents, Abednego and Mama Agnes, desperate to find him, have accepted the emotional support and help of their tenant, Zamani, the unreliable narrator through whom the story is told. Zamani, an orphan, feeling a "prick of opportunity," takes advantage of their desperation and endeavors to replace Bukhosi and go from "surrogate son" to "son" through a variety of manipulative acts. As Zamani, who seems to live by the philosophy "that it's not what's true that matters, but what you can make true," unscrupulously attempts to cultivate an intimacy with the Mlambos, what results is a novel of confessions—some given freely, others pried through alcohol, drugs, and other means—family secrets, and an unflinching portrait of life in Zimbabwe before, during, and immediately after the Rhodesian Bush War. The wrath of the military commander dubbed Black Jesus, the Gukurahundi massacres—Tshuma's (Shadows , 2012) sprawling debut novel delves into these atrocities and others, and that history at times overwhelms the motivations and interiority of the central characters. Nonetheless, Tshuma delineates a rich and complicated tale about the importance of history ("Always, you must be looking back over your shoulder, to see what history is busy plotting for your future"), the price of revolution, the pursuit of freedom, and the remaking of one's self.
A multilayered, twisting, and surprising whirlwind of a novel that is as impressive as it is heartbreaking.