Charles Mungoshi

Problematic issues, everyday gossip, familial tensions are all transformed by Mungoshi's imagination. Relationships and locations are concrete, visual, cinematic, but the reader is treated to a twist of perspective, his characters' self-doubts are cracks through which we all see deep into their souls.--blurb from Walking still.

We welcomed Charles Mungoshi to UF as African writer in residence during the Spring 2000 semester. Considered one of Zimbabwe's best writers, he has won two International P.E.N. awards, was awarded the prestigious Noma prize in 1992 for his children's book One day, long ago, and in 1998 won the African region Commonwealth Writers Prize for Walking still. He has published in both Shona (a book of his poetry in Shona received Noma honorable mention in 1990) and English. The setting sun and the rolling world was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year 1989.

According to interviews (e.g. Sicherman 1990, below), he was born December 2, 1947 in a village in Manyene Tribal Trust Land near Chivhu, Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia). He grew up herding cattle and helping his father farm his small plot in the then-called Native Purchase Areas, and enjoying the stories told by his grandmother, a gifted storyteller who appears as Mandisa in Waiting for the rain (see Brown and McLoughlin, 1995). He went to nearby and later more distant schools in the 1950s and '60s. During his third year in secondary school and later, in 1966, he published stories in a local magazine, [African] Parade.

He left school in 1967 to look for work, and became a research assistant with the Rhodesia Forestry Commission near Mutare. In 1969 he began work with Textbook Sales as an invoicing clerk, and in 1970 published his first novel in Shona, Makunun'unu maodzamwoyo. In 1972 he published (in Nairobi, as in Southern Rhodesia African writers were discouraged from publishing in English) a collection of short stories, Coming of the dry season (which was banned in Rhodesia in 1974, though lifted after protests by university staff in 1978). In 1975 he left the bookshop and began work as an editor for the Rhodesia Literature Bureau, and he married in 1976. Some kinds of wounds... (1980) reflects the pain and violence of this period, during which Zimbabwe's independence was established after years of fighting and negotiation.

With independence, several of Mungoshi's works became standard readings on Zimbabwean school syllabi, and in 1982 he left his job at the Literature Bureau to become an editor at the newly established Zimbabwe Publishing House. In 1985 he was writer in residence at the University of Zimbabwe Department of Literature, where he conducted seminars and workshops for a year. He spent most of the 1980s concentrating on Shona language work, and during the early 1990s he wrote and acted for several films and videos. Mr. Mungoshi currently lives in Harare with his wife and five children.

If you are interested in conducting any further library research on this or other literary matters, please see our pages on Literature sources and the bibliography for African Writers: Voices of Change.

Select bibliography

Coming of the dry season. Nairobi, Oxford University Press, 1972. 61 p. 19 cm. Series: New fiction from Africa. LIBRARY WEST PR9390.9.M8 C651 1972
[Available from African Books Collective.]

Inongova njakenjake. Salisbury <Zimbabwe> : Longman, 1980. 68 p. ; 19 cm.  "Published in association with the Literature Bureau." ISBN: 0582613752. LIBRARY WEST PL8681.9.M8 I5x 1980
[Play in Shona, translated on cover as Each does his own thing].

Kunyarara hakusi kutaura? Harare, Zimbabwe : Zimbabwe Pub. House, c1983. 137 p. ; 19 cm. Series note: Writers ; 16. Series: ZPH writers series ; 16. ISBN: 0949932655. LIBRARY WEST PL8681.9.M8 K8 1983
[In Shona, the title means Isn't silence talk?].

Makunun'unu maodzamwoyo. <Salisbury> College Press <1970>. 109 p. 19 cm. Series: <African literature collection, no. 195>. LIBRARY WEST PL8681.9.M8 M3x

The milkman doesn't only deliver milk. Edition: Rev. and extended ed. Harare, Zimbabwe: Baobab Books, 1998. x, 69 p. : ill. ; 19 cm. Alternate title(s): Milkman does not only deliver milk. Poems. ISBN: 1779090064. LIBRARY WEST PR9390.9.M8 M551 1998
[Available from African Books Collective].

Ndiko kupindana kwamazuva. Published: Gwelo, Rhodesia : Mambo Press, 1975. 158 p. ; 21 cm. LIBRARY WEST PL8681.9.M8 N4

One day, long ago : more stories from a Shona childhood; illustrated by Luke Toronga. Harare, Zimbabwe : Baobab Books, 1991. 62 p. : ill. (col.) ; 26 cm. [Second volume of stories from the Shona oral tradition. The first volume, Stories from a Shona Childhood. Intended audience: Appr. for PKY]. ISBN: 0908311303. LIBRARY WEST PR9390.9.M8 O54 1991
[Available from African Books Collective. Joint winner of the 1992 NOMA Award for Publishing in Africa].

The setting sun and the rolling world : selected stories. London : Heinemann, 1987, c1980. 202 p. ; 23 cm. ISBN: 0434481661. LIBRARY WEST PR9390.9.M8 S47x
[Joint winner for the 1988 African region Commonwealth Writers Prize, and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year 1989. A collection of short stories previously published in Coming of the dry season and Some kinds of wounds. Available in print as published in 1989 by Beacon Press, Boston. ISBN 0807083216. pbk $12.00].

Some kinds of wounds and other short stories. Gwelo <Zimbabwe> : Mambo Press, 1980. 179 p. ; 18 cm. Series: Mambo writers series. English section ; v. 7. LIBRARY WEST PR9390.9.M8 S6x 1980

Stories from a Shona childhood. Harare, Zimbabwe : Baobab Books, 1989. 55 p. : ill.; 27 cm. [Intended audience: Appr. for PKY]. ISBN: 0908311133. MEAD LIBRARY
[Available from African Books Collective].

Waiting for the rain. London : Heinemann Educational, 1975. <5>, 180 p. ; 19 cm. Series: African writers series ; 170. ISBN: 0435901702. LIBRARY WEST PR9390.9.M8 W33
[Available from African Books Collective].

Walking still. Harare, Zimbabwe : Baobab Books, 1997. 167 p. ; 21 cm. ISBN: 0908311990. LIBRARY WEST PR9390.9.M8 W351 1997
["The author notes that many of the stories published in this collection were published in Horizon magazine in a different and shorter form." Available from African Books Collective. Winner of the 1998 African region Commonwealth Writers Prize].

Note that some additional poems and short stories are anthologized in:

Muchemwa, K. Z. Zimbabwean poetry in English: An anthology. Gwelo, Rhodesia [Zimbabwe]: Mambo Press, 1978.

Obradovic, Nadezda (ed). Looking for a rain god : an anthology of contemporary African short stories. New York, N.Y. : Simon and Schuster, 1990. ISBN: 0671671774. LIBRARY WEST PR9348.L6 1990

----- (ed). African rhapsody : short stories of the contemporary African experience with a foreword by Chinua Achebe. 1st Anchor Books ed. New York : Anchor Books, 1994. LIBRARY WEST PR9348 .A33 1994

Style, Colin and O-Nan Style. Mambo book of Zimbabwean verse in English. Mambo writers series. English section ; vol. 23. Gweru, Zimbabwe : Mambo Press, 1986. LIBRARY WEST PR9390.6 .M36 1986

Veit-Wild, Flora. Patterns of poetry in Zimbabwe. Gweru, Zimbabwe : Mambo Press, 1988. LIBRARY WEST PR9390.2 .W55 1988

Critical works and reviews

Brown, G. R. and T. O. McLoughlin. 1995. "Charles Mungoshi." Twentieth century Caribbean and Black African writers. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Third series, v. 157. pp. 209-217. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, Inc.

Contains criticism, detailed biographical information, sources from almost a dozen interviews, and an extensive bibliography of Mungoshi's original published works as well as secondary works of criticism.

Freedman, Samuel G. 1989. "Africans in awe of the city" (review of The setting sun and the rolling world.). New York Times Book Review Sept. 24, 1989: p. 23, col. 1.

"Unlike so many American practitioners of minimalism, Mr. Mungoshi proves that spare prose need not equal small ideas."

Lindfors, Bernth. Black African literature in English, 1987-1991. London: Hans Zell, 1995.

Index to criticism.

McDowell, Robert E. 1990. Review of The setting sun and the rolling world. World Literature Today 64 (Summer 1990):521.

"Mungoshi is particularly good at examining the impossibility of people's remaining detached from or untainted by other lives....[He] discloses his compassionate view of terribly trapped people. Because of his absolute sureness with language, one never gets the sense that any character or comment or act in his stories is contrived."

Obradovic, Nadezda. 1998. Review of Walking still. World Literature Today 72 (2):446-447.

"Mungoshi, one of Zimbabwe's finest writers, is at his best here."

Ojaide, Tanure. 1999. Review of The milkman doesn't only deliver milk. World Literature Today 73 (3):585.

"Mungoshi weaves portraits of characters and scenes which become memorable from the combination of the poet's strong descriptive power and simple use of language.... [but] beneath the veneer of simple narration and descriptions of people, scenes, and experiences, there is a subtext of deep meaning."

Riemenschneider, Dieter. 1989. "Short fiction from Zimbabwe." Research in African Literatures 20 (3):401-411.

Sicherman, Carol. 1990. "'We have still to shed a few of Lucifer's feathers...': An Interview with Charles Mungoshi." Matatu: Journal for African culture and society. Vol. 7:111-125.

Stratton, Florence. 1986. "Charles Mungoshi's Waiting for the rain." Zambezia 13 (1):11-24.

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