Waiting for the Rain

From the twice-awarded Commonwealth Wealth Writers Prize winner Charles Mungoshi, Waiting for the Rain displays a clear and capable voice writing on colonialism and its effects. Written at the height of the Zimbabwean War of Independence, it focuses on the tensions between tradition, colonialism and preserving African culture in Zimbabwe in the 1960s. When the oppressors offer their death-blow foreign religion, there is little to hold together the social fabric, and Mungoshi uses the varying perspectives of members of the Mandengu family to create a representative picture of a family caught in the midst of these tensions.