Book Reviews

The Hangman’s Replacement, the first book in a promised series by Zimbabwe author Taona Dumisani Chiveneko, begins with devoted family man Abel Muranda making the arduous journey from his village in rural Zimbabwe to the capital city of Harare to apply for the job of hangman. The position has been vacant for almost a decade, and the nation is moving rapidly toward abolition of the death penalty. But for reasons as mysterious to Muranda as to the reader, a powerful group of leaders is eager to fill the position and clear death row. Muranda, however, is concerned with neither […]

Because he died before his time, the teen protagonist of this wildly imaginative fantasy/sci-fi novel ends up in the special part of the afterlife reserved for lost things. He is meant to wait there until his proper time to die. Wit, as he is called in the afterlife, finds himself sharing this peculiar sort of purgatory with all manner of lost things—not just children. Buttons, socks, religion (“people are losing their religion all the time, right?”) and more turn up there as well. Wit, however, is unwilling to accept that he is dead and immediately sets about trying to find […]