Junctions

<p><em>Junctions</em> is Daniel Mandishona’s second collection of short stories following<em> White Gods Black Demons</em> (Weaver Press 2009). Again he quarries the richness and variety of Zimbabwean lives to deliver characters and narratives spanning the social spectrum: political ambition and violence; beggars on city streets; family disputes at funerals; rural journeys peppered with mishaps; corrupt policemen and born-again prophets; bus accidents and township tailors. But if his subjects reect grim realities Mandishona’s treatment of his characters is achieved with a wonderful sardonic irony capacious enough to give even the worst offenders a large humanity.</p><p>The book concludes with Edmore Chidzonga an unemployed graduate reflecting on the new dispensation promised by the 2017 change of national leadership: He remembered how his late grandfather often told him that <em>tsuro haipone rutsva kaviri</em>; a hare can only escape a bush re once. He had spent six years protesting. … For the first time he felt he had no future.</p>