Bryony Rheam, Siphiwe Ndlovu and Drew Shaw discuss Bulawayo as a Character
Zimbabwe Academy of Music, 7 May 2021
In celebration of literary talent in the City of Kings, Drew Shaw conversed with award-winning authors Bryony Rheam and Siphiwe Ndlovu, both recipients of Morland Scholarships - at the Zimbabwe Academy of Music, 7 May 2021.
Bryony Rheam is the author of This September Sun (amabooks, 2009) and All Come to Dust (amabooks, 2020). Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu is the author of The Theory of Flight (Penguin, 2018) and The History of Man (Penguin, 2020). Both call Bulawayo home and it is rare for one city to have two Morland Scholarship recipients.
Here, the authors talk about how the Morland has helped them with novels they are currently working on. They discuss the experience of reading one another's work, and how and why Bulawayo figures in their writing. Is there such a thing as 'the Bulawayo novel' (as academic Tsitsi Jaji has described it), and is it distinct in some way? How do these authors do their historical research, and what are the challenges of capturing an earlier era? All these questions, and more, are discussed in the video link below.