I think almost all my writing has ever done is to attempt to draw the things stifled creativity was told not to. To bleed something of a god stuck in the grey area between matter and things that matter. To be the mirror unbreakable even by time herself.
My writing remembers everything that clothed it. What with the memory of an elephant it has. It remembers milk on the tongue silk as light was on the eyelids. Before that it remembers why they fought so much to keep it alive, until mere bones told someone that wisdom and immortality was its destruction… the boy who lived. My writing remembers more than it foresees, and it's terribly nostalgic of Zee.
Until time's bow. Some syllables argue that it's hardly palatable, then contradict themselves almost always in the next sentence.
From The Parallel World to The Trial of Eze and Ezi, as of the time of this review, spans a papyrustic tapestry of fourteen books in five years or less. Posthumous titles will be as such. My writing is a voice so well-conditioned to be silent it learned too late that that's how an infant dies on its mother's back.
Given a mugshot of its author it would plead the fifth or adoption. If not abduction altogether. It's a cryptic descriptive explanation of all the things that I'm not, and has a terrifying danger of going unseen and unknown. Someday it will matter. Or not. Guess who cares… Like I said, nobody on this side of the ink your eyes are listening to.
Let me walk you through the books. The Parallel World is as rooted in eBhundu, Mzingwane High School as the Genesis. It's what left that institution before I did. The tale of Kevin's odyssey from that institution—not a school,
I can't stress that enough—with a crypt of instructions from a mirror under his pillow just after he robs the Prefects' Room.
The fate that evolves leads him to a blue library. His intuition is led by his brother, Khulekani, who died five years prior to this journey. Then The Unreader: my favorite true lie—fiction I mean.
Almost more than Norovac and Suri.
Those two defeated me so much that I only won by immortalising them in ink. The Unreader is Lullenda's orbituary from a year at Eveline High School.
Lullenda stumbles into—not upon—a diary that remembers her. And the librarian, who remembers everything. Especially the shit he shouldn't. I did 340 something days at that school.
'Maktub, I.' Saanskrit for 'It is written.'
An Enochian dialect of tattoos on my bones that I'm not supposed to rush to my skin. My be-afterfore thoughts. On the trek to my left and that to my right.
These are short stories written out of pure boredom while I was trying to get a grip on a prose project to compliment The Parallel World. At this point the makings of Maktub that I can remember is that irreducible moment when I found a copy of The Unreader soaked, blotted page and exorcised ink in a puddle of rain water when I got 'home' one day. No.44 Andrea Drive: an exorcism, a horcrux, and a memoir. That's where I stayed when at Thomas Rudland Primary School. Romney Park. Where a trolley game went wrong and I licked the tarred road for about six feet. "I've never seen so much blood come out of such a small mouth!" said Amanda. Compiled from memory, that memory pled a need for its memory between then and The Parallel World. The Parallel World is a common phrase in this excuse of writing.
Poetic Potions. Onset the Bulawayo Public Library. The Castle. Ft The Queen, Letjani. Poetic Potions was my real attempt at writing poetry. Amateur. The sentences were long, the clouded hours too, just as was daylight.
The Castle was and is still a fortress of atoms of diction. I stayed there for a whiley while. Even had a third of discarded books in my room. And other important people… then I met Zee. Inkless Quills: the mirror that Kevin saw in The Parallel World paved the way for Khulekani—my elder brother who died five years before we saw Kevin; Bessie and Turnaya—Tanzila's little sister. Tanzila will show up a few books later.
There's a curious time dilation. ROIL BAA Winner of the Outstanding Fiction Award some other year. After we did Jozi Book Fair 2017 in two days, really, a series spat itself onto the nearest parchment I could lie to. Bessie is a real life name of my brightest friend from Primary School.
If any of you still don't—of which there's no portion of forgiveness for—she believes in my writing. As I believe in hers. Literally dedicated to her… But Shantan brought it to life. As in Shantanic Verses in The Colour of Alchemy.
The Colour of Alchemy: at this point I had a very different understanding of poetry. My poetry that is. Anything that wrote poetry before me is blasphemy, and anything after owes me a drink. The makings of this book: BPL. Some political turmoil I don't remember, and a looting spree. Was that a cop that threw a grenade that some idiot wrote a poem about in Philtrum? And the cop of it later on came to ask for a cigarette because there was no one else in town? But I had already met Zee.
At a poetry event I didn't want to go to. Little did time know. Alchemy is the art of carving gold from pure air, is it not? Nerfetiri: the sequel to Inkless Quills.
Because I decided that Khulekani, Bessie and Turnaya's adventures can go further than a mirror. Circa Covid. The Zimbabwean version. Nerfetiri was a good witch to write about. Norovac and Suri: the quietest I had seen or heard of Bulawayo CBD streets. The title is an anagram too.
Evetry: 101 poems for her. Eve, plus poetry. But there are roughly 306 Shakespearean sonnets in manuscript somewhere…. I'm just saying I've read the original 152, and that is some good waste of words. 307 wouldn't be so much of a trainsmash. Saiyedal Verses for Summer: a screenshot from the view the constellations yearn for.
That book is hope, and an elixir. Also a most putrid petrified death for anything that argues that I write too much. Inception of the screenplay: Dr. Tanzila Saiyed.
Makings of the screenplay: Privilege denied. Avril and the Opinionated Origami: Nerfetiri needed a sequel. And creativity isn't contagious. Even in Nigeria. The Trial of Eze and Ezi: you can only connect the dots backwards.
"Sometimes love never knows when to die,"—Lucky Dube and that other chick. Both dead. And finally The MagdalEve Scrolls, out December 2026.
I have been honoured: AfriCAN Honouree Author's Award (2025); African Writers Award, Wakini Kuria Award for Children's Literature for my short story "The Enchanted Pen" (2021)—and let me say, that's the first receipt of this particular award in the history of Zimbabwe.
Kendeka Short Story Prize Longlist for "Hotel Rhodesia" (2021); ROIL BAA Outstanding Fiction Award nomination for Norovac and Suri (2021); African Writers Award Shortlist for a short story "Requiem for Africa's Creatively Inept" (2020); ROIL BAA Outstanding Fiction Award nomination for Nerfetiri (2020); and a ROIL BAA Outstanding Fiction Award win for Inkless Quills (2018). Inkless Quills has also been accepted for use in school libraries by the Gauteng Department of Education.
I enjoy exploring the dynamics of storytelling and creating. In silence or in inaudible music. That's all. Guess who cares? Nobody on this side of the ink your eyes are listening to.
About reviewer
Nathaniel Ziphoezinhle Mpofu is a 32-year old multi-award winning author and librarian from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Born at Lady Rodwell Hospital, Nathaniel went to Mtshingwe Primary School and attended Mzingwane High School. He later studied Library and Information Science at Bulawayo Polytechnic College.
Are you a reviewer of art, literature? Contact khumbulani@heartandsoul.co.zw - 0715450146