Charles Mungoshi is a major Zimbabwean writer in both English and his mother tongue, Shona, who has long been neglected in the wider context of African writing. His accolades follow from the sustained output of a writer of unusual talent and range--fiction, poetry, drama, and more recently writing for film. He won the Rhodesia Literature Bureau award for the best Shona novel in 1969; P.E.N. International Awards for two novels, one in English and one in Shona (1976); the Commonwealth Literature Prize for Africa (1988); and the Noma Award for African Writing (1992). His writing in English, which includes short stories, a novel, poetry, and children's stories, is marked by a masterly control of language and situation and deftness in portraying the inner worlds of children and adults struggling to comprehend themselves and their relationship with those around them. Zimbabwean society, rural or urban, is ever changing, and Mungoshi writes...