A gentle but fearless book, The Stone Virgins explores the emotional and physical scars caused by warfare, and enables us to respond truthfully to the catastrophic depths of conflict.
Yvonne Vera Boeken
19 september 1964 – 7 april 2005
Yvonne Vera wordt geprezen om haar poëtische proza en veerkrachtige vrouwelijke personages, die diep ingaan op moeilijke thema's en het uitdagende verleden van Zimbabwe. Haar romans worden gewaardeerd om hun unieke perspectief op de postkoloniale Afrikaanse literatuur, waarbij de psychologische impact van geschiedenis op individuen wordt onderzocht. Vera richt zich op het innerlijke leven van haar personages, waarbij haar schrijven vaak de harde realiteiten weerspiegelt waarmee zij werden geconfronteerd.
Yvonne Vera's novels chronicle the lives of Zimbabwean women with extraordinary power and beauty. Without a Name and Under the Tongue , her two earliest novels, are set in the seventies during the guerrilla war against the white government.In Without a Name (1994), Mazvita, a young woman from the country, travels to Harare to escape the war and begin a new life. But her dreams of independence are short-lived. She begins a relationship of convenience and becomes pregnant.In Under the Tongue (1996), the adolescent Zhizha has lost the will to speak. In lyrical fragments, Vera relates the story of Zhizha's parents, and the horrifying events that led to her mother's imprisonment and her father's death. With this novel Vera became the first Zimbabwean writer ever to deal frankly with incest. With these surprising, at times shocking novels Vera shows herself to be a writer of great potential.
Butterfly Burning brings the brilliantly poetic voice of Zimbabwean writer Yvonne Vera to American readers for the first time. Set in Makokoba, a black township, in the late 1940s, the novel is an intensely bittersweet love story. When Fumbatha, a construction worker, meets the much younger Phephelaphi, he"wants her like the land beneath his feet from which birth had severed him." He in turn fills her "with hope larger than memory." But Phephelaphi is not satisfied with their "one-room" love alone. The qualities that drew Fumbatha to her, her sense of independence and freedom, end up separating them. And the closely woven fabric of township life, where everyone knows everyone else, has a mesh too tight and too intricate to allow her to escape her circumstances on her own.Vera exploits language to peel away the skin of public and private lives. In Butterfly Burning she captures the ebullience and the bitterness of township life, as well as the strength and courage of her unforgettable heroine.
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