\n| Add caption<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n <\/p>\n Book: Chibarabada<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/span><\/div>\nAuthor: Tinashe Muchuri<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/span><\/div>\nPublisher: Bhabhu Books (2015)<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/span><\/div>\nISBN: 978-0-7974-6439-1<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n Tinashe Muchuri signs into the league of disruptive innovators with his new novel, \u201cChibarabada.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\nThe accomplished debut from the award-winning journalist, themed after an illicit one-day brew, is an aggregation of potent devices. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\nThe title \u201cChibarabada\u201d (not to be confused with that other dancehall chant) is a Shona expression for rapid movement and, as pertinent to the context, a name for the shebeen concoction. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\nA society set adrift by purposelessness, injustice, materialism, hedonism, and the diversionary spell of \u201cchibarabada,\u201d is the material of this ambitious novel which easily stakes a claim among the country\u2019s millennial notables.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\nMuchuri, visibly out to extend the creative territory of the Shona novel, combines folk art, alternating narrative modes and stream of consciousness to eccentric effects. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\nThe author, however, indulges his esoteric tendency to a fault, dragging down the reader\u2019s flip rate, in some cases provoking doubt given that the novel is set to a child narrative. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\nWhile the author\u2019s mastery of the Shona lore is a plausible plug-in for the internal monologues, it comes across as laboured when assigned to everyday conversations, especially the child\u2019s moralistic homilies to wayward elders.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\nMuchuri compensates for this tendency with a plot that appeals the reader\u2019s humanity. Shingi, the heroine of the story is a rejected orphan who lives at a dumpsite on the outskirts of the city.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\nThe juxtaposition of a child whose innocence is violated by gross injustice and cheated out of her inheritance and space in society by her scheming relatives may rewire a few readers\u2019 attitude towards children on the street. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\nIt is easy to pack everyone into regular demographics, often as informed by prevailing prejudice, but Muchuri compels readers to stop assuming, gives a voice to the underdog and levels an indictment against a society which sways with power and privilege.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\u201cOppressors of the innocent will be wanderers in the wilderness, mountains and unfamiliar refuges in vain search for rest. They will be called demons,\u201d Muchuri\u2019s \u201cstreet kid\u201d prophesies.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\nThe heroine learns the economics of survival on the fringe of society, among hardened criminals, and is subsequently arrested when her act of compassion for an abandoned baby is turned against her.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\nMuch of the action takes place at the \u201crabu,\u201d colloquial Shona for \u201cdumpsite\u201d where the vagabonds live on retrievables from city garbage. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\nIt is compelling to conclude from Muchuri\u2019s thread that for every child on the street, there is a dysfunctional family and a cold community in the background.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\nMuchuri\u2019s theme has been the material of emotive art, notably Oliver Mtukudzi\u2019s \u201cStreet Kid\u201d and his namesake \u201cOliver Twist.\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\nNotwithstanding ethical parallels, the world according to Muchuri is a dark hovel without rhyme and reason.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\nThe lamp post in that dark hovel is the resilience of the human spirit under the boot of the oppressor. The child never loses her pride even as hunger digs her inside and forces her to live in the dump like a mouse, to import Lt. Stitchie\u2019s rendering of his own \u201cReal Life Story.\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\nMuchuri explores inordinate greed and taking of power over the defenseless by society\u2019s privileged. Most of the problems in the novel are caused by the worship of money and power. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\nAlthough his novel breaks away from tradition according to the old masters, its drift is not so much experimental but representative of the new establishment.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\nThe Shona novel can be tentatively classified into two phases, to import Piketty-dating from popular economics.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\nBC is before Charles Mungoshi, that period when the old masters romanticised about a golden past and lamented distortion of the ancient landmarks in the destabilising trail of modernity, often with a didactic finish.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\nMungoshi shook things up with a new kind of novel which framed the same concerns in a more life-like frame, disruptive and dislocated, as if the novel is an aggregation of tortured brain scans. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\nNew writers, writing AD, after the disruption of \u201cKunyarara Hakusi Kutaura,\u201d take eccentricity to scale, a reflection of their progressively degenerating society.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\u201cThe sun has set, where do we sleep? I cannot hear what you say. You cannot hear what I say. In this jungle, where do we sleep? We be must drunk, O we are drunk! Yes, we are drunk,\u201d the song heard by Mungoshi one night casts a drunken singer\u2019s spell on the subsequent generation of Shona novelists.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\nThereafter, ambitious works such as Ignatius Mabasa\u2019s \u201cMapenzi\u201d and \u201cImbwa Yemunhu,\u201d are also anatomies of a society in spiritual meltdown and madness is taken to scale.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\nIn a 2014 interview for this column, accomplished literary critic Prof George Kahari indicated that the experimental breakaway was a necessary dare for the growth of the Shona novel.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\u201cThe new novelists are improving by the day. They are challenging the predominant way of expressing oneself in one way,\u201d said Prof Kahari said.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\nSuccinctly put, the new code insists that disorder is truer to life than order. It may take another dare to break out of it as young writers, storming the arena after the second generation revolt, readily identify with it.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\u201cWhereas the old writers used to write chronologically, in a predictable way as in the folk-tale, the new writers are exploiting more enabling techniques to capture their world artistically \u2013 talk of stream of consciousness, in medias res \u2026\u201d said Prof Kahari.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\u201cThey imitate social reality in ways they find more compelling for the particular case, from the middle, back and forth; they have stopped going from start to finish\u2026 They depart from the sarungano\u2019s reference to a detached setting and forcefully relive the reader through the contemporary,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\nNow enter Muchuri with his aggregation of tortured brain scans. He comes aboard equally under the spell of Mungoshi\u2019s drunken singer.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\nIn fact, drunken singers, Tino and Meno, the imbibers of \u201cchibarabada,\u201d are a regular feature of the sub-plot.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\nThere two mafia-run the dumpsite and claim daily fees for everyone who comes to eke out a livelihood there, \u201cmatasangana\u201d for turning up at the dumpsite and \u201cmatagarika\u201d for continuing at the site.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\nFor all the sustained oddities which run the tapestry of the story, Muchuri never veers away from real life.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\nMafia administration was blamed for t<\/a>he destruction of the Glen Home Industry Complex last year, when an industry of such a scale was supposed to be the business of the council. It is also the order of the day among illegal settlers and artisanal miners. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\nThe two drunken singers who are richly versed in folk art are not be ignored, as Alick Macheso implies elsewhere. Some of their stories speak to the very space we inhabit on multiple levels. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\nOne of the more pertinent folk tales in the book is the story of the \u201cThe Woman, the Lion and the River\u201d told by the heroine\u2019s mother. The storyteller laments mankind\u2019s insensitive conquest of nature which is now backfiring globally in the form of climate change.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Add caption Book: Chibarabada Author: Tinashe Muchuri Publisher: Bhabhu Books (2015) ISBN: 978-0-7974-6439-1 Tinashe Muchuri signs into the league of disruptive innovators with his new novel, \u201cChibarabada.\u201d The accomplished debut from the award-winning journalist, themed after an illicit one-day brew, is an aggregation of potent devices. The title \u201cChibarabada\u201d (not to be confused with that other dancehall chant) is a Shona expression for rapid movement and, as pertinent to the context, a name for the shebeen concoction. A society set adrift by purposelessness, injustice, materialism, hedonism, and the diversionary spell of \u201cchibarabada,\u201d is the material of this ambitious novel which easily stakes a claim among the country\u2019s millennial notables. Muchuri, visibly out to extend the creative territory of the Shona novel, combines folk art, alternating narrative modes and stream of consciousness to eccentric effects. The author, however, indulges his esoteric tendency to a fault, dragging down the reader\u2019s flip rate, in some cases provoking doubt given that the novel is set to a child narrative. While the author\u2019s mastery of the Shona lore is a plausible plug-in for the internal monologues, it comes across as laboured when assigned to everyday conversations, especially the child\u2019s moralistic homilies to wayward elders. Muchuri compensates for this tendency with a plot that appeals the reader\u2019s humanity. Shingi, the heroine of the story is a rejected orphan who lives at a dumpsite on the outskirts of the city. The juxtaposition of a child whose innocence is violated by gross injustice and cheated out of her inheritance and space in society by her scheming relatives may rewire a few readers\u2019 attitude towards children on the street. It is easy to pack everyone into regular demographics, often as informed by prevailing prejudice, but Muchuri compels readers to stop assuming, gives a voice to the underdog and levels an indictment against a society which sways with power and privilege. \u201cOppressors of the innocent will be wanderers in the wilderness, mountains and unfamiliar refuges in vain search for rest. They will be called demons,\u201d Muchuri\u2019s \u201cstreet kid\u201d prophesies. The heroine learns the economics of survival on the fringe of society, among hardened criminals, and is subsequently arrested when her act of compassion for an abandoned baby is turned against her. Much of the action takes place at the \u201crabu,\u201d colloquial Shona for \u201cdumpsite\u201d where the vagabonds live on retrievables from city garbage. It is compelling to conclude from Muchuri\u2019s thread that for every child on the street, there is a dysfunctional family and a cold community in the background. Muchuri\u2019s theme has been the material of emotive art, notably Oliver Mtukudzi\u2019s \u201cStreet Kid\u201d and his namesake \u201cOliver Twist.\u201d Notwithstanding ethical parallels, the world according to Muchuri is a dark hovel without rhyme and reason. The lamp post in that dark hovel is the resilience of the human spirit under the boot of the oppressor. The child never loses her pride even as hunger digs her inside and forces her to live in the dump like a mouse, to import Lt. Stitchie\u2019s rendering of his own \u201cReal Life Story.\u201d Muchuri explores inordinate greed and taking of power over the defenseless by society\u2019s privileged. Most of the problems in the novel are caused by the worship of money and power. Although his novel breaks away from tradition according to the old masters, its drift is not so much experimental but representative of the new establishment. The Shona novel can be tentatively classified into two phases, to import Piketty-dating from popular economics. BC is before Charles Mungoshi, that period when the old masters romanticised about a golden past and lamented distortion of the ancient landmarks in the destabilising trail of modernity, often with a didactic finish. Mungoshi shook things up with a new kind of novel which framed the same concerns in a more life-like frame, disruptive and dislocated, as if the novel is an aggregation of tortured brain scans. New writers, writing AD, after the disruption of \u201cKunyarara Hakusi Kutaura,\u201d take eccentricity to scale, a reflection of their progressively degenerating society. \u201cThe sun has set, where do we sleep? I cannot hear what you say. You cannot hear what I say. In this jungle, where do we sleep? We be must drunk, O we are drunk! Yes, we are drunk,\u201d the song heard by Mungoshi one night casts a drunken singer\u2019s spell on the subsequent generation of Shona novelists. Thereafter, ambitious works such as Ignatius Mabasa\u2019s \u201cMapenzi\u201d and \u201cImbwa Yemunhu,\u201d are also anatomies of a society in spiritual meltdown and madness is taken to scale. In a 2014 interview for this column, accomplished literary critic Prof George Kahari indicated that the experimental breakaway was a necessary dare for the growth of the Shona novel. \u201cThe new novelists are improving by the day. They are challenging the predominant way of expressing oneself in one way,\u201d said Prof Kahari said. Succinctly put, the new code insists that disorder is truer to life than order. It may take another dare to break out of it as young writers, storming the arena after the second generation revolt, readily identify with it. \u201cWhereas the old writers used to write chronologically, in a predictable way as in the folk-tale, the new writers are exploiting more enabling techniques to capture their world artistically \u2013 talk of stream of consciousness, in medias res \u2026\u201d said Prof Kahari. \u201cThey imitate social reality in ways they find more compelling for the particular case, from the middle, back and forth; they have stopped going from start to finish\u2026 They depart from the sarungano\u2019s reference to a detached setting and forcefully relive the reader through the contemporary,\u201d he said. Now enter Muchuri with his aggregation of tortured brain scans. He comes aboard equally under the spell of Mungoshi\u2019s drunken singer. In fact, drunken singers, Tino and Meno, the imbibers of \u201cchibarabada,\u201d are a regular feature of the sub-plot. There two mafia-run the dumpsite and claim daily fees for everyone who comes to eke out a livelihood there, \u201cmatasangana\u201d for turning up at<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-sculpture"],"yoast_head":"\n Shona Masters and Innovators | Blockspace<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=412\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Shona Masters and Innovators | Blockspace\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Add caption Book: Chibarabada Author: Tinashe Muchuri Publisher: Bhabhu Books (2015) ISBN: 978-0-7974-6439-1 Tinashe Muchuri signs into the league of disruptive innovators with his new novel, \u201cChibarabada.\u201d The accomplished debut from the award-winning journalist, themed after an illicit one-day brew, is an aggregation of potent devices. The title \u201cChibarabada\u201d (not to be confused with that other dancehall chant) is a Shona expression for rapid movement and, as pertinent to the context, a name for the shebeen concoction. A society set adrift by purposelessness, injustice, materialism, hedonism, and the diversionary spell of \u201cchibarabada,\u201d is the material of this ambitious novel which easily stakes a claim among the country\u2019s millennial notables. Muchuri, visibly out to extend the creative territory of the Shona novel, combines folk art, alternating narrative modes and stream of consciousness to eccentric effects. The author, however, indulges his esoteric tendency to a fault, dragging down the reader\u2019s flip rate, in some cases provoking doubt given that the novel is set to a child narrative. While the author\u2019s mastery of the Shona lore is a plausible plug-in for the internal monologues, it comes across as laboured when assigned to everyday conversations, especially the child\u2019s moralistic homilies to wayward elders. Muchuri compensates for this tendency with a plot that appeals the reader\u2019s humanity. Shingi, the heroine of the story is a rejected orphan who lives at a dumpsite on the outskirts of the city. The juxtaposition of a child whose innocence is violated by gross injustice and cheated out of her inheritance and space in society by her scheming relatives may rewire a few readers\u2019 attitude towards children on the street. It is easy to pack everyone into regular demographics, often as informed by prevailing prejudice, but Muchuri compels readers to stop assuming, gives a voice to the underdog and levels an indictment against a society which sways with power and privilege. \u201cOppressors of the innocent will be wanderers in the wilderness, mountains and unfamiliar refuges in vain search for rest. They will be called demons,\u201d Muchuri\u2019s \u201cstreet kid\u201d prophesies. The heroine learns the economics of survival on the fringe of society, among hardened criminals, and is subsequently arrested when her act of compassion for an abandoned baby is turned against her. Much of the action takes place at the \u201crabu,\u201d colloquial Shona for \u201cdumpsite\u201d where the vagabonds live on retrievables from city garbage. It is compelling to conclude from Muchuri\u2019s thread that for every child on the street, there is a dysfunctional family and a cold community in the background. Muchuri\u2019s theme has been the material of emotive art, notably Oliver Mtukudzi\u2019s \u201cStreet Kid\u201d and his namesake \u201cOliver Twist.\u201d Notwithstanding ethical parallels, the world according to Muchuri is a dark hovel without rhyme and reason. The lamp post in that dark hovel is the resilience of the human spirit under the boot of the oppressor. The child never loses her pride even as hunger digs her inside and forces her to live in the dump like a mouse, to import Lt. Stitchie\u2019s rendering of his own \u201cReal Life Story.\u201d Muchuri explores inordinate greed and taking of power over the defenseless by society\u2019s privileged. Most of the problems in the novel are caused by the worship of money and power. Although his novel breaks away from tradition according to the old masters, its drift is not so much experimental but representative of the new establishment. The Shona novel can be tentatively classified into two phases, to import Piketty-dating from popular economics. BC is before Charles Mungoshi, that period when the old masters romanticised about a golden past and lamented distortion of the ancient landmarks in the destabilising trail of modernity, often with a didactic finish. Mungoshi shook things up with a new kind of novel which framed the same concerns in a more life-like frame, disruptive and dislocated, as if the novel is an aggregation of tortured brain scans. New writers, writing AD, after the disruption of \u201cKunyarara Hakusi Kutaura,\u201d take eccentricity to scale, a reflection of their progressively degenerating society. \u201cThe sun has set, where do we sleep? I cannot hear what you say. You cannot hear what I say. In this jungle, where do we sleep? We be must drunk, O we are drunk! Yes, we are drunk,\u201d the song heard by Mungoshi one night casts a drunken singer\u2019s spell on the subsequent generation of Shona novelists. Thereafter, ambitious works such as Ignatius Mabasa\u2019s \u201cMapenzi\u201d and \u201cImbwa Yemunhu,\u201d are also anatomies of a society in spiritual meltdown and madness is taken to scale. In a 2014 interview for this column, accomplished literary critic Prof George Kahari indicated that the experimental breakaway was a necessary dare for the growth of the Shona novel. \u201cThe new novelists are improving by the day. They are challenging the predominant way of expressing oneself in one way,\u201d said Prof Kahari said. Succinctly put, the new code insists that disorder is truer to life than order. It may take another dare to break out of it as young writers, storming the arena after the second generation revolt, readily identify with it. \u201cWhereas the old writers used to write chronologically, in a predictable way as in the folk-tale, the new writers are exploiting more enabling techniques to capture their world artistically \u2013 talk of stream of consciousness, in medias res \u2026\u201d said Prof Kahari. \u201cThey imitate social reality in ways they find more compelling for the particular case, from the middle, back and forth; they have stopped going from start to finish\u2026 They depart from the sarungano\u2019s reference to a detached setting and forcefully relive the reader through the contemporary,\u201d he said. Now enter Muchuri with his aggregation of tortured brain scans. He comes aboard equally under the spell of Mungoshi\u2019s drunken singer. In fact, drunken singers, Tino and Meno, the imbibers of \u201cchibarabada,\u201d are a regular feature of the sub-plot. There two mafia-run the dumpsite and claim daily fees for everyone who comes to eke out a livelihood there, \u201cmatasangana\u201d for turning up at\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=412\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Blockspace\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-06-16T16:09:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-10-25T14:58:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-uv62obF7otI\/Vm03HiBEmHI\/AAAAAAAABoI\/FE8rkJM0Ce4\/s400\/COVER%2BOF%2BCHIBARABADA.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"hardsouth\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"hardsouth\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script 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\/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Shona Masters and Innovators | Blockspace","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=412","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Shona Masters and Innovators | Blockspace","og_description":"Add caption Book: Chibarabada Author: Tinashe Muchuri Publisher: Bhabhu Books (2015) ISBN: 978-0-7974-6439-1 Tinashe Muchuri signs into the league of disruptive innovators with his new novel, \u201cChibarabada.\u201d The accomplished debut from the award-winning journalist, themed after an illicit one-day brew, is an aggregation of potent devices. The title \u201cChibarabada\u201d (not to be confused with that other dancehall chant) is a Shona expression for rapid movement and, as pertinent to the context, a name for the shebeen concoction. A society set adrift by purposelessness, injustice, materialism, hedonism, and the diversionary spell of \u201cchibarabada,\u201d is the material of this ambitious novel which easily stakes a claim among the country\u2019s millennial notables. Muchuri, visibly out to extend the creative territory of the Shona novel, combines folk art, alternating narrative modes and stream of consciousness to eccentric effects. The author, however, indulges his esoteric tendency to a fault, dragging down the reader\u2019s flip rate, in some cases provoking doubt given that the novel is set to a child narrative. While the author\u2019s mastery of the Shona lore is a plausible plug-in for the internal monologues, it comes across as laboured when assigned to everyday conversations, especially the child\u2019s moralistic homilies to wayward elders. Muchuri compensates for this tendency with a plot that appeals the reader\u2019s humanity. Shingi, the heroine of the story is a rejected orphan who lives at a dumpsite on the outskirts of the city. The juxtaposition of a child whose innocence is violated by gross injustice and cheated out of her inheritance and space in society by her scheming relatives may rewire a few readers\u2019 attitude towards children on the street. It is easy to pack everyone into regular demographics, often as informed by prevailing prejudice, but Muchuri compels readers to stop assuming, gives a voice to the underdog and levels an indictment against a society which sways with power and privilege. \u201cOppressors of the innocent will be wanderers in the wilderness, mountains and unfamiliar refuges in vain search for rest. They will be called demons,\u201d Muchuri\u2019s \u201cstreet kid\u201d prophesies. The heroine learns the economics of survival on the fringe of society, among hardened criminals, and is subsequently arrested when her act of compassion for an abandoned baby is turned against her. Much of the action takes place at the \u201crabu,\u201d colloquial Shona for \u201cdumpsite\u201d where the vagabonds live on retrievables from city garbage. It is compelling to conclude from Muchuri\u2019s thread that for every child on the street, there is a dysfunctional family and a cold community in the background. Muchuri\u2019s theme has been the material of emotive art, notably Oliver Mtukudzi\u2019s \u201cStreet Kid\u201d and his namesake \u201cOliver Twist.\u201d Notwithstanding ethical parallels, the world according to Muchuri is a dark hovel without rhyme and reason. The lamp post in that dark hovel is the resilience of the human spirit under the boot of the oppressor. The child never loses her pride even as hunger digs her inside and forces her to live in the dump like a mouse, to import Lt. Stitchie\u2019s rendering of his own \u201cReal Life Story.\u201d Muchuri explores inordinate greed and taking of power over the defenseless by society\u2019s privileged. Most of the problems in the novel are caused by the worship of money and power. Although his novel breaks away from tradition according to the old masters, its drift is not so much experimental but representative of the new establishment. The Shona novel can be tentatively classified into two phases, to import Piketty-dating from popular economics. BC is before Charles Mungoshi, that period when the old masters romanticised about a golden past and lamented distortion of the ancient landmarks in the destabilising trail of modernity, often with a didactic finish. Mungoshi shook things up with a new kind of novel which framed the same concerns in a more life-like frame, disruptive and dislocated, as if the novel is an aggregation of tortured brain scans. New writers, writing AD, after the disruption of \u201cKunyarara Hakusi Kutaura,\u201d take eccentricity to scale, a reflection of their progressively degenerating society. \u201cThe sun has set, where do we sleep? I cannot hear what you say. You cannot hear what I say. In this jungle, where do we sleep? We be must drunk, O we are drunk! Yes, we are drunk,\u201d the song heard by Mungoshi one night casts a drunken singer\u2019s spell on the subsequent generation of Shona novelists. Thereafter, ambitious works such as Ignatius Mabasa\u2019s \u201cMapenzi\u201d and \u201cImbwa Yemunhu,\u201d are also anatomies of a society in spiritual meltdown and madness is taken to scale. In a 2014 interview for this column, accomplished literary critic Prof George Kahari indicated that the experimental breakaway was a necessary dare for the growth of the Shona novel. \u201cThe new novelists are improving by the day. They are challenging the predominant way of expressing oneself in one way,\u201d said Prof Kahari said. Succinctly put, the new code insists that disorder is truer to life than order. It may take another dare to break out of it as young writers, storming the arena after the second generation revolt, readily identify with it. \u201cWhereas the old writers used to write chronologically, in a predictable way as in the folk-tale, the new writers are exploiting more enabling techniques to capture their world artistically \u2013 talk of stream of consciousness, in medias res \u2026\u201d said Prof Kahari. \u201cThey imitate social reality in ways they find more compelling for the particular case, from the middle, back and forth; they have stopped going from start to finish\u2026 They depart from the sarungano\u2019s reference to a detached setting and forcefully relive the reader through the contemporary,\u201d he said. Now enter Muchuri with his aggregation of tortured brain scans. He comes aboard equally under the spell of Mungoshi\u2019s drunken singer. In fact, drunken singers, Tino and Meno, the imbibers of \u201cchibarabada,\u201d are a regular feature of the sub-plot. There two mafia-run the dumpsite and claim daily fees for everyone who comes to eke out a livelihood there, \u201cmatasangana\u201d for turning up at","og_url":"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=412","og_site_name":"Blockspace","article_published_time":"2016-06-16T16:09:00+00:00","article_modified_time":"2026-10-25T14:58:04+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"https:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-uv62obF7otI\/Vm03HiBEmHI\/AAAAAAAABoI\/FE8rkJM0Ce4\/s400\/COVER%2BOF%2BCHIBARABADA.jpg","type":"","width":"","height":""}],"author":"hardsouth","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"hardsouth","Est. reading time":"6 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=412#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=412"},"author":{"name":"hardsouth","@id":"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/#\/schema\/person\/a336a678f28eacb341ce63c6b84b17d0"},"headline":"Shona Masters and 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